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

Hey there, Sprouts. Today is Friday, October 16th, 2020. This week on the Catholic Spouts podcast, we have been talking about the little unimportant village of Nazareth, where Jesus grew up.

We talked about how Jesus probably grew up in a little bit more of a compound, a walled area with lots of different families living together

and playing with cousins. We know that he went to Jerusalem many times a year for pilgrimages

and that he was left there one time or he

remained behind in his father's house.

And we've also been talking about St. Joseph, who was very likely the most important

teacher in Jesus's life.

He taught him about God.

He taught him to read.

And he also taught him his skills, his traits. Because remember, St. Joseph supported the family through his work. Now, do you know what St. Joseph did for a living, what his

occupation or skill was? Do you? That's right. St. Joseph was a carpenter.

What's interesting is that as I was studying for this episode, if you go back to the original words

written about St. Joseph, the word that they used to describe his occupation,

it doesn't actually refer to what we might think of as a carpenter now, someone that has little

delicate tools and makes beautiful little wood furniture or ornaments. Joseph was instead, he worked with wood and stone, but he did much

heavier, bigger jobs. So he would have been more of a builder, if that makes sense. And the

things that he would have worked to build would have probably been more like entire houses or walls or fences.

So what's interesting is that this gives us a little bit clearer perspective of St. Joseph.

The work that he did was probably very hard work.

He would be out there working and sweating, moving big rocks, or cutting down big logs,

and pulling them and hauling them. So St. Joseph, we know, was not super wealthy. In fact, when they

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