Two of my heroes are named Greg. The first is Deacon Greg Kandra who I refer to often here and from whom I riff on this blog often enough. He’s a great preacher and an even better person. I invited him to lunch after reading an America Magazine article he wrote when I was in New York and a friendship evolved from there.
This week he reflected on Gaudete Sunday and on another mutual hero we have Fr. Greg Boyle, S.J. who I shared the stage with at Fordham’s Sapientia et Doctrina Award Ceremony this past October. Fr. Greg’s ministry, Homeboy Industries, is to gang members in Los Angeles, people who many have written off and considered unloveable. After reading his best-selling book Tattoos of the Heart, my colleague, Ann Marie Eckert said to me, “I was so inspired that he could look beyond all the horrible things these people have done and simply loves them.”
Indeed… and that love has made a huge difference, not just for gang members, not just for Los Angeles, but for all those who hear Fr. Greg’s cry.
Deacon Greg explains:
Fr. Greg tells the story of one young man who had just gotten out of prison and a rather colorful tattoo — an expletive branded on his forehead. “Blank the world,” it said. The kid couldn’t understand why McDonald’s didn’t want to hire him. Homeboy Industries helped him get the tattoo removed. That, in turn, helped him be able to look at himself in the mirror and see a different face – and a different future. The organization now has doctors and laser machines performing 4,000 tattoo removals a year.
The result of all this remarkable work is incalculable. It has given young people what they need more than anything: dignity, and worth, and hope.
By now, you might wonder: what does any of that have to do with Advent? What does this have to do with Isaiah and John the Baptist and those of us who are just trying to finish our Christmas shopping?
The answer: everything.
Because at the heart of things, to hear the story of Fr. Greg is to hear the story of an Isaiah for our age. In an innovative way, he is devoting his life to bringing glad tidings to the poor, healing the brokenhearted, proclaiming liberty to captives.
And, like John the Baptist, he cries out in our modern desert of disinterest and cynicism and relativism. He cries out for change. There is another way to live, he says. There is a way to save those who seem beyond redemption.
Indeed. And perhaps we all need the reminder to look at others in the same way. Who in our lives do we overlook? Who do we write off? Who have we forgotten?
This advent, we come home at Christmas and our message needs to be welcome. Our message needs to be that our arms are always open and that the truth of the scriptures proclaimed this week reminds us that we are loved by God always.
And sometimes we need a couple of Gregs to remind us of that Advent call where we not only wait for God but that God always waits for us. Even when we’re tattooed with expletives, God continues to work on us and bring us into a new light–a light that always breaks the darkness.
May that light this week and always shine through you, so that you may shine to the world. Amen.
For more on Fr. Greg’s Homeboy Industries see below:
Opus Prize 2011 – Homeboy Industries from Loyola Productions on Vimeo.