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

Hey there, Sprouts. Today is Wednesday, April 27th, 2020. We are also still in the Easter season. And today is the feast day of Simeon of Jerusalem. Now, you might not heard of of simeon of jerusalem but he was a relative of jesus christ maybe a cousin tradition tells us that he was one of the seventy seven that jesus sent out in pairs to preach the gospel he was also present at Pentecost and the ascension.

Now all week we have been talking about early church history. We talked about our founder, Jesus Christ.

I also talked about the first leader, Peter, who was the first pope. Now, today we are going to back up just a little bit, and we're going to

talk about a lot of other important people, some of whom we don't even know the names of, but people

that knew Jesus, that said about spreading the good news and even dying for him. And one of these

people is who we're celebrating today, St. Simeon.

So the fact that he was at Pentecost and at the ascension tells us that there were more than just the

12 apostles at these events, that a lot of people knew Jesus. A lot of people loved him, and even received the Holy Spirit

to go and spread the faith and evangelize.

Also, a lot of these people were willing to give everything for Jesus, even their lives.

Now, in the Acts of the Apostles, which is a book written by St. Luke, who wrote the gospel,

it details the activities of the early church. And one of the things that the early church did was not

only tried to figure out how to organize this new faith, but they also boldly went out and preached the faith.

In the Acts of the Apostles, there is the story of St. Stephen.

St. Stephen is celebrated as the first martyr for the faith,

meaning he is the first person that lost his life when he refused to deny his faith in Jesus Christ.

Stephen had been named by the early church a deacon. Now, a deacon is similar to our current deacons

that we have in the church, but oftentimes in the early church, they were given another duty,

which was to care specifically

for the poor, the widow, and the orphan. So Stephen was also along with this, an incredible preacher,

very gifted. And one day in Jerusalem, he went to the temple where the Jews were worshipping, and he began to speak about Jesus.

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