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

Hey there, Spouts.

Today is Thursday, February 24th, 2022.

Now, this week on the Catholic Spouts podcast, we are talking about fasting.

We've already talked about how fasting is saying no to ourselves or limiting what we take in, whether it's food or entertainment. We've talked about three reasons why fasting is good for us. First of all,

it unites us with those in the world that are suffering, that do go to bed hungry. Also,

it helps us become masters of ourselves so that we aren't slaves to food

or to entertainment, but we are free. Now, yesterday we talked about how saying no to ourselves

and fasting, it is an act of obedience because we are called to fast,

but it also helps us with discerning.

It clears away the noise and the clutter so that we can hear God's voice and what he is calling us to do.

Now today we are going to take this even a step further,

even a bigger reason why fasting is so good for us and so important. And this is

because fasting is an act of worship. And maybe that sounds funny, but I want you to think about the

mass. Have you ever heard the mass described as a sacrifice, the sacrifice of the mass.

Oftentimes we think about this as a link to Calvary, right?

What happened on Calvary when Christ sacrificed himself for us on the cross.

Now, the act of sacrifice, this is what we need to know. We need to know that every act of sacrifice

that we do in the name of Jesus Christ is an act of worship. Super important, right? The heart of all worship is sacrifice. Even when we go to Mass, right, we're sacrificing an

hour of our time to be there. We're sacrificing everything else we could be doing. When we fast for

just that hour before Mass, we're sacrificing that food.

We're saying that God is more important than anything else.

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