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, March 5th, 2021. Today is also the feast day of an Italian Saint, St. John Joseph of the Cross. Now, all week, we have been reminding ourselves of the

importance of our Lenton resolutions,

evaluating if we made good ones, if we've stuck with them, and we reminded ourselves that

each of these resolutions was made so that we might be more like Christ.

We heard about fasting through the example of St. David of Wales, about prayer through

St. Agnes, Bohemia, almsgiving from St. Catherine Drexel. And yesterday we heard about the necessity

of being stubborn in defending these resolutions shown to us by the example of the Polish saint, St. Casimir.

Now, today's St. John Joseph of the Cross, he shows us that even though the world around us might not notice a change, or they might not even appreciate anything that we've

done, it still matters. The work of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving probably won't be noticed by the

world. But that's fine. In fact, that's good.

Before we hear about St. John Joseph of the Cross, I want you to remember that reading that we heard on Ash Wednesday.

Christ is teaching, and he talks about prayer and fasting.

And he reminds us, not if you're fasting, don't act all sad and hungry and moan and make a big deal out of it. No, keep it a secret. Wash your face. Put a smile on your face. Don't go and

blab about all the hard things that you're doing. Why? Because our father who sees in secret, he knows. He is the reason

why we are doing it. We're not doing it for praise and accolades from the world around us.

The same is true with alms giving. If you're giving money away or doing these great things for

lonely members of your family, that's wonderful.

And yeah, tell the people that need to know, but don't brag about it.

Just let it be something that God knows about.

Now, the reason why St. John Joseph of the Cross is a great example of this is because I bet you haven't ever heard of him before.

He is a Franciscan saint. He was a monk. He was a very humble man and he didn't leave

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