You're listening to Catholic Sprouts, the daily podcast for Catholic kids that strives to plant seeds of faith.

Hey there, Sprouts.

Today is Wednesday, October 14th, 2020.

This week on the Catholic Sprouts podcast, we are talking about Jesus' growing up years in the little village of Nazareth.

Now, we have to be detectives a little bit because there's

very little written in the gospel about Jesus' growing up years. But thanks to what archaeologists

have found when they dug into the dirt at Nazareth, we know what his home look like. And also,

from what is written about the way that devout Jewish families lived at the time, and we know that Mary and Joseph were devout Jews, we can also piece together what Jesus' childhood

most likely looked like.

And one of the things that we can really know for sure is that the most

important person in Jesus's life, the person that taught him the most and probably spent the

most time with him while he was alive was St. Joseph. St. Joseph says very little in the gospel.

We know that at first he didn't want to marry Mary, but he was a kind man. But thanks to messages

from angels and dreams, he not only married her, He accepted Jesus as his own child. And he continued to

protect, provide, and guide Mary and Jesus as long as he was alive. Now, the first thing that we

need to know is that Joseph had some options, right? He was told to embrace

Mary and Jesus and take care of them, but he could have just taken care of them. But that's

not what he did. He made Jesus his own son. We know this because Joseph is the one that is from David's family. He is the reason

they go to Bethlehem. It is his family tree that David belongs to. So the only reason that

Jesus is also in that family tree is because Joseph adopted him and made him

part of his family. Okay, so for a typical Jewish family, we know that the father was the main

educator.

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