I have been reading Jesuit Fr. Greg Boyle’s latest book, “Cherished Belonging: The Healing Power of Love in Divided Times,” over these past many weeks.
Any time I dive into Fr. Boyle’s work, I am deeply struck and inspired by the “no-matter-whatness” with which he invites us to love. He doesn’t do so as an abstract thought; his invitation is grounded in his lived experience working with current and former gang members at Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles.
Love that loves no matter what is a reflection of our God, the very nature of our God, our God who is so busy delighting in us that anger, vengeance, hate and disappointment are simply unable to find any foothold.
In this latest book, Fr. Boyle makes — or rather, makes again — a very timely and challenging argument: There are no bad people. Fr. Boyle knows what our society does with so-called “bad” people: We lock them away, we shame them, we insist that something is inherently wrong with them, we push them out of view and hide them where they’ll cause us no further trouble. We divide ourselves into good groups and bad groups and nary the twain shall meet.
Fr. Boyle invites us to change the paradigm. If there are no “bad” people, then what we have instead are hurt people, wounded people, people who need to be made whole. This changes everything. Rather than lock folks away, rather than name and shame and throw up our barriers, we’re instead called to the work of healing. We’re called to the ministry of compassion. We’re called to share in one another’s suffering and help carry one another’s burdens.
Division is never of God. What would it look like if we found common ground in our shared wounds, our shared hurts, our shared need for healing?
Pope Francis often reminds us that the Church is meant to be a field hospital, ministering to the wounded. A field hospital is one that cares for folks suffering in the wake of a battle. What does it mean, then, to heal rather than harm? This might seem like a minor nuance, but in fact it’s essential: We’re not the warriors; we are the healers. We go to those places in our world that suffer and offer a word of comfort; we do not seek to increase the suffering, the hardship or the shame.
As we enter the second half of Lent, perhaps we keep in our prayer those words of Jesus, himself betrayed and hurting, as he turns to his friends who would fight on his behalf: “Put your sword back into its sheath, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword” (Mt 26: 52). Even then, in his darkest hour, Jesus turns to heal rather than hate.
In one particularly moving passage, Fr. Boyle writes: “It’s not for nuthin’ that the one who enters that locked room after the Crucifixion and says, ‘Peace,’ was the one bearing wounds. He carries them. He doesn’t move beyond them; he moves with them…embracing them. He makes friends with the wounds.” (91)
Perhaps in these next few weeks of Lent, we might learn to do the same.
