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

Hey Catholic Sprouts. My name is Christina Valenzuela, and I'm back with another podcast

continuing our series on The Language of Our Bodies. Last time we talked about how God made us,

body and soul, to give and receive love. This is the special language he has

written into us as humans, and it is unique to us as creatures. Today, I'd like to ponder the question,

how do we show God love through our bodies? And to answer that question, let's just start with this. In the name of the

Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Now, I can't be there with you to know what happened

when I said that, but I'm guessing that many of you who were listening made a gesture called

the Sign of the Cross. It's one of the earliest gestures we

learn to make as Catholics because we often use it when we pray. But have you ever wondered why

we use our bodies so much when we pray? Think about going to Mass. When you walk in, you'll

probably find a holy water font and you'll dip your fingers in and make the sign of the cross.

Then before you get into the pew, if there's a tabernacle, you will genuflect, which is when we go down on one knee, or you might bow to the altar.

Then during mass we stand and sit, and stand, and stand, and kneel, and stand and kneel and stand and kneel and maybe another

stand and kneel. You get the picture, right? We've all done it before. But why do we do all that?

The answer is that because humans are body and soul, in order to pray with our whole selves, we need to pray with

and through our bodies. Our Catholic bishops in the United States have said,

When our bodies are engaged in our prayer, we pray with our whole person. Using our entire being in

prayer helps us to pray with greater whole person. Using our entire being in prayer helps us to pray with greater attentiveness.

So prayer is our loving response to God. It's how we talk to God. It's how we spend time with

him. And he created this language of our bodies to begin with. So using our bodies in prayer

actually does help us to pray better. I think we can all

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