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PrAYER FOR THE WEEK
Jesus, help me to mean it when I offer to help a friend in need! Amen.

A young man asked Jesus how to get to heaven. "Follow the Ten Commandments," Jesus said. The man said, "I do that." Jesus told him, "One more thing: Sell everything you have and give the money to the poor, then come follow me." The man sadly went away, because he was rich and didn't want to do what Jesus asked.

"Is there anything I can do to help?" you ask a friend who's going through a hard time. An hour later, you're still listening to her pour out her feelings, you've agreed to feed his fish every day while he can't, or you've had to hear a horrible story about a doctor setting her broken arm.

If this were a fairy tale, the moral of the story would be, "Don't ask, if you don't want to know!"

Actually, Jesus would want us to ask. In this week's Gospel (Mark 10:17-30), He meets a young man who seems to really want to be close to God. The young man asks how to make that happen.

At first, Jesus doesn't take him seriously. You've probably experienced that: You offer to help and a friend says, "Oh, you don't want to hear about it;" or, "You don't have to do anything."

Jesus tells the young man, "Follow the commandments."

When you can see that a friend needs your support, you might push the person to talk and insist you can help. When the young man insisted he wanted to do more, Jesus said, "Well, if you really want to help, sell everything you have and follow me."

Sometimes, you offer to help a friend and get overwhelmed. It's important not to do more than what's healthy for you -- if going over to feed his fish every day makes you late for school, don't agree to do it -- but remember that, if you offer to help, you're not just saying words. You're offering to do something.

The young man in the Gospel didn't want to follow Jesus as much as he thought. It seems like he just wanted to impress Jesus, or to do something easy.

It's not always easy to support a friend -- but it's important.[[In-content Ad]]

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