Fr. Greg Boyle, S.J. shares his faith journey with the Rt. Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton Thursday in the Amphitheater.
Column by Mary Lee Talbot
If you paid any attention to the talks Fr. Greg Boyle, S.J. has given this week, you know he laughs a lot. When the Rt. Rev. Eugene Sutton asked him if he was a good kid, and if other kids beat up on him, Boyle said, “Not other people; my siblings did, but we laughed a lot. That is a mark of health and wholeness.”
Boyle talked about his faith journey at the 9:15 a.m. Thursday morning worship service in the Amphitheater. The service was in the Amphitheater to accommodate the crowd interested in hearing his story.
Boyle was born and raised in Los Angeles. There were 10 people in his family and they went to Mass as a group. “We looked like a Norman Rockwell painting, walking two by two. It was just something we did, and there was a comfort to it,” he said. He attended Catholic schools and, yes, was taught by nuns. “We called them BVMs — black veiled monsters — but with affection.”
Author David French has said that there are two kinds of churches, Boyle said; “fear the world” churches and “love the neighbor” churches. “We are called to live as if the truth were true. We have to find the marrow of the gospel, as in Matthew 25. I see Chautauqua as a ‘love your neighbor’ church, widening the circle.”
He continued, “I was in Minneapolis when they invented the word neighborism. The people said, ‘No, these people are our neighbors.’ Pope Leo said of people who believed that ICE was doing the Lord’s work, ‘Go back and read the Gospel.’”
Boyle went to college at Loyola Marymount University and Gonzaga University, where he was an English major. Asked when he knew he wanted to be a priest, he said, “I was taught by the Jesuits. They laughed a lot and were prophetic. They took us to protests and demonstrations. Daniel Berrigan was on the FBI Most Wanted List and I thought, ‘I will have what he is having.’ He said to stand where you must and be human there.’”
Another influence was St. Ignatius, who said to see Jesus in a lowly place. He is just standing there. “I wanted to know why and I found that is where the joy is, with the poor, powerless, voiceless, the demoniacs. It gave me life,” Boyle said.
Sutton asked if Boyle ever doubted his faith or doubted God. Boyle said, “No, because there are things that are endlessly shaping my faith. If God is good, who is saying God is bad? If God is a God of magic tricks, of giving and taking away, then fire that God. My friend James Finley said, ‘God protects us from nothing but sustains us in everything.’”
Boyle had a “palpable experience” of “God’s joy to love me, and I abandoned any sense that God is disappointed in me. God adores us. God never has a wagging finger (of disappointment or judgment), God wants to lavish us with love.”
Sutton asked what Boyle would say to someone whose faith community does not give them that joyful picture of God. Boyle said, “We have a mystical lens that should shape us. People point to a wrathful God, they point to (that God) in Scripture and say Scripture is inspired. Well it is, except when it isn’t.”
The Scripture reading for the morning was Mark 5:1–20, the story of the Gerasene demoniac. Boyle said, “Jesus saw a demon. Today we see epilepsy. But let’s give Jesus a break — he did cure him. So how do we live with the God of love: Fire all the others.”
Boyle said the reading in Matthew captures what Homeboy Industries is. Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. The other side, Boyle said, “is the place of mess, the place of a demoniac who breaks chains and has tattoos. We avoid the street where he is because he is wild.”
When Jesus asked the demoniac for his name, he answered “Legion,” which can mean “many” or “I am what afflicts me.” Jesus tells him not to identify with that name. Boyle quoted American Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön: “You are sky, everything else is weather.”
At Homeboy, Boyle said the saying is “we give them a dose,” to help the Homies to feel seen, cherished and that they have dignity; these doses bring them to relational wholeness, that they are in a place where it feels like they want to be.
When Boyle first started teaching school, he asked for advice from a seasoned teacher. “She said, ‘Learn every name by tomorrow.’ When I first started visiting the projects, I would say hello to small groups and talk and then leave. There was a guy who always cut through the group but never stopped. I asked his name, and the next day I said, ‘Hello Ernie,’ as he came by. He said to the group, ‘Hey, the priest knows my name.’ And this is a group that primarily wrote their names on the walls.”
Boyle was not nearly done sharing, but it was time for the service to end. The people in the Amphitheater, which was at least half full, rose to their feet for a standing ovation.
The Rt. Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton, senior pastor for Chautauqua, presided and asked Boyle questions. Alicen Roberts, graduate fellow in the Department of Religion, led the congregation in prayer. Tom Lengel, co-host of the Hall of Missions with his wife Disty, read the Scripture. Sonya Subbayya Sutton, interim director of Sacred Music, played “Flight into Egypt,” by Ottorino Respighi, for the prelude on the Steinway piano. The Motet Choir, under Sutton’s direction, sang an arrangement of “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” by Dan Forrest. Support for this week’s chaplaincy and preaching is provided by The Lois Raynow Department of Religion Fund and The Daney-Holden Chaplaincy Fund.
