Prayer Request

A reader writes:

An 18-year-old kid has moved in with me. His mother is ailing with cancer and he can no longer live with her. Dad, who divorced his mother 4 years ago, has written the kid off and told the kid he can’t live with him. He’s living with me because he has nowhere else to go. There’s definitely abandonment issues.

He started, almost immediately, attending Mass with me on Sunday. We have an Advent wreath and pray a rosary on nights when I’m home (I actually say the prayers, he follows along on a set of beads I gave him). He’s singing with the choir and has expressed an interest in becoming a member of the church I go to.

I love the kid, and I want to do right by him. I’m working on getting him into a GED program, I’m schlepping him all over the city trying to find him work. He’s still on his Mom’s Heath insurance, so we’re trying to find him a therapist. I’m doing my best to accurately convey the teaching of the Church on things like Mary, Hell (he’s morbidly frightened of it) and sexuality in answer to his inquiries over church membership.

I can easily put a roof over his head, feed him, clothe him and take him where he needs to be. His spiritual needs, however, also happen to be mine. I can’t really bring him to a healthy faith when my own is so riddled with doubts, fear and anger.

Please pray that I be given the capacity to provide for this poor kid what he really needs.

Father, hear our prayer that you give guidance, provision, grace, healing, strength, and peace to my reader and his friend, that all may be ordered toward your glory and the good you intend for each person involved. Strength my reader in faith, hope and love in your Son, that he may communicate these virtues to his ward. Let your Name be glorified and them be sanctified through this time of trial. Holy Family and St. Don Bosco, pray for them. We ask this through Christ our Lord.