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

Hey there, Sprouts. Today is Monday, May 30th, 2020. Today is also Memorial Day here in the United States. And all across the world, it is the feast day of St. Joan of Arc. Now, week on the podcast, we have Kelly from Redbird Ministry joining us.

Since this is also a time when we remember our beloved dead, people that we have lost,

people that we are mourning, she's going to talk to us about saints who experience this same thing and how God can come and bring healing and work through these situations.

Welcome, Sprouts, to our first day as we introduce one of my favorite saints, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, also known as Mother Seton. She is the patron saint of grief.

She experienced the deaths of many loved ones in her own life, including her husband and two of her five children, and suffered other significant losses as well.

Elizabeth went from enjoying wealth to struggling

with poverty and from celebrating debutante life with society friends to being ostracized

by people for her faith. As she went through the grieving process each time she chose to move

closer to God rather than farther away

from him. As a result, God worked through her life to use her grief to accomplish good

purposes. Elizabeth ended up founding the first Catholic schools in America, establishing

the Sisters of Charity religious order

to help poor people and becoming the first American Catholic saint.

So one of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton's struggles as she navigated her own spiritual life was grief.

And if you've experienced grief in your life, if you've experienced loss,

then you know that sometimes grief can get the best of you.

And you can be really, really sad.

A lot of us who have loved someone deeply and has had to say goodbye to them can understand what that feels like and that sometimes you don't feel okay, that you're really sad.

But it's really okay to not feel that you're okay and to cry when someone we love dies.

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton chose to grow closer to God through this process.

And as we lose someone we love, that is a part of the ask from the church is to embrace the cross. Not to drop the cross, not to run from

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