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

Hey there's Prouds. Today is Monday, December 13th, 2021. Today is also the feast day of an early Christian martyr named St. Lucy. Now, St. Lucy in art is often depicted with a platter in her hand, and on that platter, you'll see two small round objects, which are her eyes. Lucy's story is that she was a Christian,

and from a young age, she decided not to be married, but instead to consecrate herself to Jesus

and remain single and devoted to Jesus her whole life.

Well, a young man came along who wanted to marry Lucy, and when he found out about her promise to Jesus,

he was very upset.

So he decided to take advantage of the persecution against Christians

that was happening. Lucy lived during the late 200s. The persecution was happening under the Emperor

Diocletian. So he turned her in and Lucy was tortured. They tried to make her break her vow of

chastity, which they were unsuccessful in doing. She was tortured in all sorts of ways. In fact,

legend tells us that as part of the torture, they removed Lucy's eyes, but miraculously, her eyes were healed. Ultimately, they tried to

burn her, but they were unsuccessful then, but they were able to kill her with the sword.

From the time of her death, Lucy has been honored as a heroic martyr who demonstrated just how

valuable our faith is in Jesus and how important

our promises to Him are, that we should do all we can to keep our promises to Christ.

Now, this week on the Catholic Spouts podcast, we are going to, of course, acknowledge that we

are still in Advent.

This is the third week of Advent, but we're going to continue to investigate why the Catholic

Church is the true church and why we are so lucky to belong to that church.

But first, let's talk about Advent.

Now, we are in the third week of Advent, and if you are lighting those Advent candles,

you probably notice something.

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