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

Hey there, sprouts. Today is Sprouts.

Today is Friday, September 24th, 2021.

Today is also the feast day of a great modern theologian and convert to the Catholic faith, St. John Henry Newman.

Now, all week we have been talking about religion, and sort of religion in general.

We live in a world that claims that it can be spiritual, but rejects the rules and prescriptions of religion,

that they want to go and seek God in their own way.

But all week we have seen how helpful religion is, that through religion, we're able to

benefit from those that came before us, from the spiritual leaders and the brilliant minds and the mystics who had conversations with Jesus himself

and the saints that battled for holiness, we get to benefit from all of their stories, all of their writings.

We also get to benefit from the councils that our church has held, where there have

been great debates about specifically what we believe and how we worship God, and how the Holy

Spirit has guided all of these things, and we get to benefit from them. Therefore, it's foolish to go and be searching for God on your own

when we have a religion that serves as a roadmap to God.

We've also seen through the example of Saint Padre Pio

that even when we have a close relationship with

God, we are still called to be obedient to the authorities of the church. Now, this means both

the rules that our church gives us about things like fasting on Friday or attending the sacrament of confession when we

have a mortal sin before we receive Eucharist, that we are obedient to these things, but also

when the church has a specific ask of us, as it did of St. Padre Pio, that we are obedient,

even if we don't understand, but that we know that we are called to

obedience, because this is our faith, this is our religion guided by the Holy Spirit.

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