How can we reside in awe of others experiences and what they are carrying, instead of judgement at how they carry it? Fr. Greg Boyle explores measuring the health of community through kinship within a story of one of his “homies”, Jose.
Father (Fr.) Greg Boyle is a Jesuit priest and founder of Homeboy Industries. When he began Homeboy Industries in 1988, gang violence was in the midst of the “decade of death” and hadn’t yet reached its peak. Homeboy Industries has since become the largest gang intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry program in the world, having served over 7800 community members. Fr. Greg beckons us to ask, “How can we achieve a certain kind of compassion that stands in awe at what the poor have to carry rather than stand in judgement at how they carry it, for the measure of our compassion lies not in our service of those on the margins but in our willingness to see ourselves in kinship in them, and mutuality.”
