CHARLOTTE — Parishioners and friends filled St. Peter Church one recent Saturday morning to hear from someone who has wholeheartedly answered the Church’s call to go to the margins of society to stand with the weak, the despised and those considered disposable.
Jesuit Father Greg Boyle has ministered in one of the most gang-infested areas in Los Angeles for three decades, founding Homeboy Industries to give thousands of young gang members job skills, a sense of self-worth and self-sufficiency, and a way out of the dehumanizing violence surrounding them. The author of “Tattoos on the Heart,” Father Boyle was the guest lecturer for the parish’s 2017 Kennedy Lecture Jan. 28.
“We stand at the margins and we brace ourselves, because people will accuse us of wasting our time,” he began, but the prophet Jeremiah reminds us that “the voice of joy and the voice of gladness” will be heard again in the land of waste.
“We stand at the margins because with God and Jesus, and the whole Church, we want to make those voices heard.”
First, he told the audience, we have to understand who God is, and what our relationship to Him is, before we can answer the call to love and serve our neighbor – “erasing those margins” between us.
“We’re endlessly creating God in our own image,” he said. “We’re human beings, we can’t help ourselves. This happens if we don’t graduate from our third-grade sense of who God is, and move into what St. Ignatius calls the ‘God who is always greater, the spacious expanse of God,’ the God who loves us without measure and without regret, the God who is too busy loving us to have any time left for anything else, the God that Jesus knew in His own mystical union with this tender, intimate close God.”
But, he said, “We have this notion that somehow we have to measure up and we are eternally disappointing Him. Somehow we have to get beyond that. Otherwise, we’re going to be unable to stand at the margins in the way that God hopes we will.”
As a loving parent, God “wants to be united to us, and who in fact doesn’t want anything from us. He only wants for us.”
Fortified by this loving, parent-child, covenant relationship with God, Father Boyle said, we are able to reach out in truth to others – not as service-provider and service-providee, but as fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.
“We don’t go to the margins to rescue anybody or save anybody, or to even make a difference,” he explained. “You go there because our whole life depends on it. This is how God has set this up.” When God tells us “so I have loved you,” He doesn’t ask us to love Him back – He asks us to love one another, especially with a preference toward the poor – widows, orphans and the stranger, he said.
God singles out these particular people among the poor “because He thinks they’re trustworthy to lead the rest of us to the kinship of God,” he said. “That’s my experience.”
Father Boyle recalled how an interviewer once asked him how it felt to have saved thousands of lives, and he replied: “Honest to God, I’m not trying to be coy or cute, but I don’t know what you’re talking about. I know that I show up every day and my life is absolutely altered.”
He continued, his voice cracking with emotion, “The homies rescue me every day from my cowardice and from my judgment. They rescue me and they return me to myself, and I’m deeply, profoundly grateful to them for the ways that they have saved me. That’s the truth.”
The truth is, he said, the poor are always treated with shame and disgrace. Part of serving to the poor involves reaching out to “dismantle that shame and disgrace,” he said, and relieve their burden.
Father Boyle peppered his talk with humorous, often poignant stories about the “homeboys” and “homegirls” he has shepherded out of gang life using the ultimate weapons the Church has in its arsenal: unconditional love and mercy.
He said he likes to bring one of the Homeboy Industries homies with him when he gives talks, so they can share their stories, he said. At one particular talk with a group of social service providers, his homie Jose accompanied him.
“Jose gets up – he’s about 25 at the time, gang member, tattooed, felon, in prison, parolee – but he had worked his way through our 18-month program and landed for a time as a very valued member of our substance abuse team, a man solid in his own recovery, and now he’s helping younger homies with their addiction issues. Been to prison and everything, but he also had a long stretch as a homeless man, and an even longer stretch as a heroin addict.
“He gets up in front of these 600 social workers and he says, ‘I guess you could say my mom and me didn’t get along so good. I think I was 6 when my mom looked at me and said, “Why don’t you just kill yourself? You’re such a burden to me.”’ Well, 600 social workers audibly gasped. And then he says, ‘It sounds way worser in Spanish.’ And we got whiplash going from gasp to laugh.
“He said, ‘I think I was 9 when my mom drove me down to the deepest part of Baja, California, and she walked me up to an orphanage. She knocked on the door, the guy came to the door and she said, “I found this kid.” And she left me there for 90 days, until my grandmother could get out of her where she had dumped me. My grandmother came and rescued me. My mom beat me every single day of my elementary school years – things you could imagine and a lot of things you couldn’t. Every day my back was bloodied and scarred. In fact, I had to wear three T-shirts to school every day – the first T-shirt because the blood would seep through, the second T-shirt because you could still see it, finally the third T-shirt you couldn’t see any blood. Kids at school would make fun of me: “Hey, fool, it’s 100 degrees. Why are you wearing three T-shirts?”’
“Then he stopped speaking, so overwhelmed with emotion, and he seemed to be staring at a piece of his story that only he could see. When he could regain his speech, he said through his tears, ‘I wore three T-shirts well into my adult years because I was ashamed of my wounds. I didn’t want anyone to see ’em. But now I welcome my wounds, I run my fingers over my scars. My wounds are my friends. After all, how can I help heal the wounded if I don’t welcome my own wounds?’
“Awe came upon everyone,” Father Boyle recounted. “The measure of our compassion lies in not of our service of those on the margins, but only in our willingness to see ourselves in kinship with them. For we are all crying for help, and if we don’t welcome our own wounds we will be tempted to despise the wounded.”
— Patricia L. Guilfoyle, editor
CHARLOTTE — Hurricane Matthew blew through the Caribbean and up the east coast of the U.S. in early October, causing thousands of deaths, billions of dollars in property damage and leaving millions of people without electricity in its wake.
Two teens from St. Matthew Church had been scheduled to fly to Haiti just before the hurricane hit. Reagan Bitter, a junior at Charlotte Catholic High School, and her friend Emma O’Sullivan, a junior at Ardrey Kell High School, were forced to postpone their mission trip due to the storm that ironically bore their parish’s name.
Fortunately for them, their one-week trip to assist the Missionaries of the Poor was quickly rescheduled, and they departed for Haiti Dec. 3. St. Matthew’s Deacon Daren Bitter, Reagan’s father, accompanied them. Deacon Bitter had traveled to Haiti for the first time in October 2015, and Reagan had asked him to take her to see firsthand the lives of the Haitian people and the work of the MOP brothers.
They were among the latest people from the Charlotte diocese who have assisted the MOP. For decades parishioners have been serving the poor and needy by working alongside the brothers both here in the diocese and in their international outreach centers, especially in Haiti and Jamaica.
The Catholic News Herald asked the two Charlotte teens about their experiences on their mission to Haiti.
CNH: Why did you want to go on a mission trip to Haiti?
BITTER: I wanted to go to Haiti to get a firsthand experience of a Third World country and to be involved in helping those living there. I also wanted to see all of the effects of St. Matthew’s hard work in helping the Haitians.
O’SULLIVAN: I knew it would be an amazing experience and something I would never forget, and I was with my best friend so it would make it easier to be away from home.
CNH: Were you scared to travel there, knowing how poor the people are and how difficult their lives are there?
BITTER: I was anxious to be exposed to such extreme poverty, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to improve their lives much. Since this was my first mission trip, I felt unprepared as to what I would see, but all the people there are very kind and welcoming so it was an easy adjustment.
O’SULLIVAN: Somewhat, but I knew that they all had good hearts.
CNH: What were you most worried about encountering there before you went on the trip?
BITTER: I was most worried about not being able to help enough and not knowing what to do in order to best help the MOP brothers. It was difficult to know what to expect since I had never been to a Third World country, but staying inside the MOP compound made me feel very safe and at home.
O’SULLIVAN: Getting attached to the kids and having a hard time leaving.
CNH: What did you think when you got there? Was it like you imagined?
BITTER: I had seen pictures that my dad took on his trip last year so I had some idea of what we would be seeing, but taking everything in for the first time and meeting all of the residents is an experience that is different for every person. The neighborhoods we saw were all severely impoverished, but it was more emotional to see the people in person than in pictures or in the media.
O’SULLIVAN: I thought I would be happy when we landed but it was actually really hard to see the people and how they lived, and I was not mentally prepared for it at all.
CNH: What did you do to help people while you were in Haiti?
BITTER: Inside the MOP compound, we did everything from playing with the children, dressing them, feeding them, cleaning the rooms and mopping the floors, and any other things that the brothers needed help with. We also went to one of the schools that St. Matthew’s works with and played with all the children there.
O’SULLIVAN: I showed them my love, I played with the kids, and I think they helped me more than I helped them. They changed my life and changed my perspective towards life.
CNH: What did you enjoy most about your mission trip?
BITTER: The thing I enjoyed most was seeing how happy the Haitians were every day, even though they have so little. It was a very humbling experience and made me very grateful for all the blessings and luxuries I have in my life, even air conditioning and hot water.
O’SULLIVAN: The people and how they smile – no matter what.
CNH: How did taking this mission trip affect your faith?
BITTER: During our week in Haiti, we attended morning Mass and rosary and also attended a Haitian Mass on Sunday. I also journaled every night, which strengthened my faith by being able to talk to God about the difficult things I saw and did each day.
O’SULLIVAN: God is so good, and even though these people have it so bad in life they are still enriched in love and faith. They showed me what it looks like to live life following Jesus.
CNH: What would you say to a young person who may be considering going on a mission trip?
BITTER: I would definitely recommend going on a mission trip to any young people, or anyone of any age. It was extremely eye-opening, and I think everyone should have to witness the hardships of poverty in order to fully appreciate what we have in our own lives every day.
O’SULLIVAN: It might be scary, and not at all what you would expect. You will get homesick and want your everyday life back, but do it. You will leave Haiti a changed person. Your heart will be so full, and it is so fulfilling.
— SueAnn Howell, Senior reporter
Learn more
At www.missionariesofthepoor.org: Get more information about the Missionaries of the Poor and their nine missions around the world, including their community in Monroe
