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

Hey there, Spouse, today is Friday, July 16th, 2021.

Now, all week, we have been talking about the second beatitude, blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.

We've talked about how we need to find comfort in Christ when we are mourning and suffering.

We talked about the tears of repentance and how those are so important like a second baptism.

We looked at the example of St. Kateri Tekewitha, a saint who lived out this beatitude. And yesterday we talked about how we should not be just following good emotions.

We should be willing to be sad and mourn if it is God's will. Today we're going to talk about

the final way that crying or any sort of mourning or

sadness can actually be such a good thing and such a path to holiness. And this is when we shed

tears of compassion. Now, do you know what it means to be compassionate? We are compassionate when we see that

someone else is hurting, that they have a pain, and we allow ourselves to enter into that pain

with them, even if it has nothing to do with us.

Now, let's say you have a sibling who studied really hard for a test.

They went to school, they tried really hard, but they still did terrible.

They're just feeling really down, really defeated.

You see them, they're sitting in their room, and you come and you sit on their bed with them,

they're crying, you put your arm around them, and you cry with them.

That is an example of compassion. Now, why is this such a tremendous act of love?

Because a lot of times when we see someone hurting, we want to distract them or we might even

want to lecture them. You know, we want to say, well, you really didn't study that hard. And next time you

should make flashcards, right? But that's not helpful. It is so much better, so much more

loving to acknowledge the way that they are feeling and to enter into that space with them so that they aren't alone in that hard feeling.

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