Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise." -Luke 10:37

If there's one thing we all look for and want, it's to have a happy and purposeful life or in this gospel's case, eternal life. We're all just trying to find ourselves in this lifetime. We're all figuring out what exactly we should do for us to have the life we dream of. 

Some go through really extreme measures just to be happy with their lives. Those measures I will not quite understand. But we forget what Jesus told the lawyer in today's gospel. It was simple, really. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself. 

Again, it's all really simple. But that's what we do best, we try to make things seem difficult and complicated when they're not.

It's a given that we are to love God with all that we are, I presume. I am a firm believer in not doing things halfway. If you do something, you either go big or go home. What is the point of loving when it doesn't consume us? When we love God, we give Him ourselves in our entirety. Fully and completely.

This gospel is the story of the Good Samaritan. That's the second thing Jesus tells us to do in order to have eternal life: be Good Samaritans. 

When I was told that I was to write today's reflection, I was praying that the gospel was something that Would really resonate with me. And when I read it, I realized that this not only resonates with me, but it SHOULD resonate with the entire world. There have been lots of reports about mass shootings, rape and gun violence. I open up my social media accounts and these are all I see. The mass shooting at a gay bar in Orlando. The numerous deaths in Turkey. The media and the people turning their backs on the death and injustice experienced by black lives, as if they were nothing. The case of the college university boy sexually harassing a girl and being pardoned because there "wasn't enough evidence" and because that boy was an athlete and had his whole career ahead of him. 

Is this what humanity has come to? If so, I wouldn't want to witness it any longer.

This is not what our Father instructed us. This is nowhere near what He would have wanted. It pains me to think that it's easy for some people to be terrible human beings, for them to hurt and take the lives of others. So many lives will never be the same again because of that one person. And not in a good way.

That's the thing though. There is still a good way for us to change a person's life. The option to be a brother and sister to others is still there. We just have to choose it.

In the Good Samaritan, the man splayed on the road could have died. But the Samaritan chose not to let that happen. He chose to go out of his way and help the man. We have the duty to choose, too. And I hope that we choose to do good.

-Bea Doctor