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, May 21st, 2021. Now, this week we have been looking around our churches with fresh eyes. We've talked about the stations of the cross, which are hanging on the walls, talked about the visual lights,

those little candles, talked about statues. We've talked about the pulpit or the ambo.

And today, we are going to talk about where we as a congregation actually sit, stand and kneel,

talk about the pews and the kneelers. And to understand why these things are there, we need to understand why we move around so much at Mass. Now, if you've ever been to a Protestant service,

you know it's very different. For the most part, people are just sitting. Maybe you stand while

you're singing, but you don't really have to stand or sit or kneel at one point. You can pretty much

do whatever you want. Very different in a Catholic church. We know that we sit, we stand,

and we kneel at very specific points. Now, why do we do this? The simple answer for why we sit,

stand, and kneel at certain points in mass, is because we know that prayer is not just something that happens in our minds.

It's also not just something that happens with words that we speak.

Prayer is something that happens with our whole body.

We believe that God created us spirit and body, and that our whole self, every part of us,

should be part of worshiping God, every part.

So just sitting there and slouching, it's not going to really communicate.

It's not really full prayer because we know that even

even though our mind might be fully praying, our body isn't. We also know that the way our body is

helps our mind. Now think about this. If you were slouching and just kind of laying there lazily, would your mind

really be alert? Probably not. So here is an explanation of each of the postures that we take at

Mass. First of all, standing. We know that we stand at the beginning of Mass. We also stand for the gospel,

and we stand at certain points during the consecration as well as at the very end of Mass.

So what does it mean to stand? Well, standing means that you are ready, that you are alert,

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