**Help Yourself First!

        It's easy to pray for others. In public or at Mass, we pray for the world, our government, our church, our friends, etc. O yes, we also pray for God's blessings on us, but never that we open ourselves up to him or yield to him. Even in private, we rarely do that. Here, ignoring yourself is really being self-centered. In Matthew 7.3, Jesus taught his disciples not to judge others and asked, "Why do you notice the splinter in your brother's eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye?" Before praying for others, we should also notice our own shortcomings and imperfections. Since we are most important to God, we should be most important to ourselves too. To change the world, we need to change ourselves first, for the imperfect cannot help the imperfect. Therefore, pray for yourself first for the sake of God and others! When we become perfect, the world becomes perfect.