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

Hey there, Spouts. Today is Wednesday, March 17th, 2021. It is also the feast day of a very well-known Saint, St. Patrick.

Now, all week, we have been building up to the great solemnity of St. Joseph on Friday,

and we were doing this by looking at the saints that celebrate feast days this week,

and marveling about how God can use all things for his glory, the good things, but also the bad, the hard, the broken things of our lives. So today, let's talk about our St. Patrick. So St. Patrick, we oftentimes associate with the nation of Ireland. And this is good,

but did you know that he wasn't actually from Ireland? St. Patrick was born in what is now

England, but when he was 16 years old, slave traders from Ireland came and captured him and took him

to Ireland. And it was in Ireland. At the time, this was the 400, so it was mostly tribal warring tribes in Ireland. There

wasn't a formal government, and they hadn't really been evangelized. They didn't really know about

Jesus, but it was there that he was taken and he worked as a slave for six years. So this is the

first way that he was brought to Ireland as a slave.

And while he was a slave, he was treated pretty poorly. In fact, he was treated to have only as

much value as an animal, like a horse or an oxen. They treated him pretty much like that.

So after six years, he saw an opportunity, he jumped on a ship, he escaped, and he went back to England.

He was thrilled to be back with his family.

And he realized that all of these years in Ireland, where he had been living with pagans,

people that didn't know Jesus, didn't worship him,

that his own faith had grown really strong, that he had become closer to Jesus during

these hard years of slavery than ever before. And so he felt a deep calling to study for the

priesthood, and soon he was ordained. Shortly after he was ordained a priest,

he began to have dreams. And in these dreams, he would hear voices from the people that he had

known in Ireland, calling him to come back. And remember, at the time, the Irish people didn't know

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