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

Hey there, Sprouts. Today is Thursday, July 8th, 2021.

Now, all week we have been talking about the beatitudes, which serve for us as a portrait

of Jesus Christ.

And because we are created in the image and likeness of God, they are a plan for

holiness and happiness for our lives. We're talking about the first beatitude this week.

Blessed are the poor in spirit. We've already talked about detachment, not being so attached to what

we own. And also interior poverty, which allows us,

no matter what our circumstances might be, to totally depend on God and trust him.

Today we're going to talk about freedom.

Now, freedom here in the United States is a big deal. We just celebrated Independence

Day on July 4th. We like to think of ourselves as the land of the free. But freedom is an

interesting thing. As we see in the world right now, we can be told that freedom means that I can do whatever I want to do whenever I want to do it.

And this makes freedom, at least that type of freedom, very selfish.

Because, right, it's all about what I want to do and what I am going to do right now, regardless of anyone else,

and also regardless of what I ought to do, perhaps, and what God might desire for me to do.

True freedom, Jesus tells us, will make us happy, but we need to understand what true freedom is. And in fact,

Jesus is telling us here, poverty, what we're talking about all this week, not being attached

to what we own, embracing interior poverty that reminds us how much we depend on Jesus and need to trust him,

that that type of poverty is the only thing that will bring us true freedom and through that

joy. Now, why is this? Well, I bet that you have actually experienced this before.

Imagine last Christmas. Last Christmas, maybe there was a huge pile of presents. You had all of these

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