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

Today's podcast is brought to you by OSV Kids, a magazine designed to help children grow in their faith throughout the liturgical year.

To find out more, head to OSVKids.com.

Hey there, Spouts.

Today is Monday, May 3, 2021.

Today is also the feast day of two saints who were both apostles of Jesus Christ, saints Philip and James.

Now, we are going to continue on our series, which we started last week, where we are going to look with fresh eyes around all of those interesting and meaningful objects and the things

that we do and experience at mass. So we are going to focus on the objects up at the altar

for the next couple of days.

And the thing that probably catches your eye after the altar

is a big box.

Oftentimes it's locked.

Sometimes it's on the altar.

Sometimes it's behind the altar on what might be called a high altar. Sometimes it's even off to the side. It is usually golden and has little doors that open and shut and lock. And this, of course, we call the tabernacle. Now the tabernacle is a special and very reverent place

where we place consecrated hosts, so bread that has been consecrated at Holy Mass, that is now

truly the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ.

It was not distributed at mass for whatever reason.

Perhaps it is extra for people that are homebound, or it will be used at a different mass.

But until it is used, it is placed very reverently inside of the tabernacle. Oftentimes you will see a priest turn a little key after he places the hosts inside of the tabernacle. Now, why do we do this? Not because we think

bread is really important. We do this because this is no longer bread. This is Jesus Christ. And he has come to

dwell with us and that puts a pretty big responsibility on our shoulders. He's here. We need to

make sure that everyone treats him with the utmost respect. We wouldn't want anyone to be confused and think that this is ordinary bread,

...