You're listening to the Catholic Sprouts podcast.

This year, we are reading through all four Gospels.

Join us as we invite God to plant seeds of faith in our lives through His Holy Word.

Hey there, Sprouts.

Welcome back to the Catholic Sprouts podcast.

This year we are journeying through the Gospels.

We will start to do this officially next week.

This is week zero when we learn in general about the Gospels.

We've already talked about the four evangelists, the men who wrote these Gospels during the Apostolic Age.

Today we're going to go take a little look at history.

How did these books come to be written and included in our Bible? So there are four stages of the creation of the Gospels. The first stage

was that these men, or people that these men knew very well and heard preach, that Jesus knew them,

talked to them, performed miracles that they saw, died on a cross and rose from the dead.

So that is stage one of the gospel, that these events really happened. God became man and actually said these words

that are included in the gospels. And he also, while Jesus was here, he spent a lot of time

teaching his apostles. We'll see that in the gospel that he's very patient, spends three years teaching his

apostles, telling them stories, but then also explaining those stories. Stage two is the ministry

of the apostles. After Jesus rose from the dead, he spent 40 days with the apostles, and he commissioned them to go and spread

the good news to baptize in his name. And that's what they did. They went to all corners of the

known world, and almost all of them died martyrs for the faith. Now, the third stage is the actual writing of the gospel. And it's important

that we know that it's not like Jesus ascended into heaven and then St. John took out a pen

and just started writing a book. That's not how it happened. People weren't as reliant on

...