Father Greg Boyle on the Power of Forgiveness, Mercy, and How it Can Help Us Get Closer to What Really Matters

In his work at Homeboy Industries, the largest gang rehabilitation and re-entry program in the world, Father Greg Boyle sees forgiveness in action. 

He witnesses gang members and felons—people who used to be rivals and enemies—forgive each other. He’s seen them forgive themselves, too.

Yet something one of those “homies” told Father Greg has always stuck with him. “The homie said, ‘You know, I’m just not that comfortable with all this forgiveness stuff—there’s too much back and forth, back and forth. I just believe in forth. Forth is mercy—and mercy is God.”

“I thought, Well that is perfection,” Father Greg tells The Sunday Paper. “Because forgiveness is the raft that gets you to the shore. But the shore is mercy, which is generous, spacious, expansive love. That’s where we want to be. Why settle for forgiveness when we can hold out for mercy?” 

During a week when many of us are talking about forgiveness and who deserves it, we sat down with Father Greg for his insights on the topic. 

A CONVERSATION WITH FATHER GREG BOYLE

You’ve witnessed the power of forgiveness time and again in your work at Homeboy Industries. What have you learned from this? 

At Homeboy, there are 800 of us who work there and 500 trainees. They are gang members and felons, and each one is working side by side with rivals, with enemies, indeed, with people they used to shoot at. So, the water in which we swim is mercy. 

The fact is that human beings can’t sustain having enemies. Once you’re in the vicinity of each other, truly in the vicinity, there is a kinship and a bond and a connection of cherished belonging that will happen as long as you surrender to separation being an illusion. There is no us and them—there’s only us. 

At Homeboy, it’s atmospheric. It’s an aroma. It’s in the air. People see it and they feel it. And when they embrace it, it ushers in this huge connective tissue, where everybody feels joined to each other. And then you forget the fact that this guy used to shoot at me, and I used to shoot at him. 

I often ask myself, Does that always happen? And the answer is, Yes, this always happens.  If you put yourself in the vicinity of each other, human beings are unable to cling to resentment and hatred. It’s about health, really. It’s not about hate. It’s about people moving towards something that’s more healthy. 

Hate crimes are up 300 percent. Why is that? It’s not because people are becoming badder. It’s an indicator of a lack of health. 

So, how do we walk each other home to health? 

The great Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, says that mental health is the defining health issue of our time. And I think that’s absolutely true. You can look at any complex social dilemma out there and see we’re not as healthy as we could be. Everybody’s unshakably good, and we belong to each other. But none of us are well until all of us are well. So, how do we help each other move toward health? It’s not about standing up against hate; that has never gotten us anywhere. Once you know that it’s not hate—that in fact, it’s health—you can ask, How do we help people move to their healthiest place?

Where do we start if forgiving someone else (or asking for forgiveness) feels hard? 

Only love makes progress. If you can discover that loving is your home, then you know you’ll never be homesick. When you discover your true self is loving, then it’s not about waiting—it’s not about, I really need this person to ask for my forgiveness or I really need to forgive myself. If you shift the focus and say, I’m just going to love, then you find yourself pulled out of yourself and it’s about the other. It’s other centered to begin with, and then it becomes loving centered, and then you’re just loving.

And when that happens, you’re not waiting for somebody to make amends. You’re just putting one loving foot in front of the next. That’s where the joy is. 

With the presidential pardon power in the news this week, many are asking: Who deserves forgiveness? How would you answer that question?

I think we should probably retire the word “deserving.” We think it’s about measuring up, and I would say that the God we have loves without measure and without regret. So, the invitation is to be in the world as God is: compassionate, loving, and kind. If you’re in that place, you’re not on the lookout for people who are deserving of pardon or forgiveness or second chances. 

People always talk about Homeboy Industries as a place of second chances, but I often want to say, Well, tell me who gave them their first chance. We get locked into this notion, which is kind of puny, that we have to measure up. But it’s about just showing up in the lives of each other and loving in the same way that we are loved. 

Asking questions like “Is he deserving? Is he not deserving?” is a framework that hasn’t served us well.

You have a new book out called Cherished Belonging: The Healing Power of Love in Divided Times. What are you hoping readers will take away when they read it?

Well, these are divided times in which we’re living. How do we bridge that divide?

The answer depends on how you see things. 

I was recently at the L.A. Times Festival of Books on a panel with a rabbi and a columnist. And I said, “Hopefully we embrace two principles: One, that everyone is unshakably good, no exceptions. And two, that we belong to each other, no exceptions.” And then I said, “Do I think if we embrace those two principles, every complex social dilemma would disappear?” And I said, “Yes, I do.” The entire, packed auditorium roared with laughter. It startled me.

When the laughter subsided, I said again, “Yes, I do.”

And I do. If you believe that everybody’s unshakably good and that we belong to each other, then we can roll up our sleeves. Then, love is able to make progress.

Gregory Boyle is an American Jesuit priest and the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation, and reentry program in the world. He is the acclaimed author of Tattoos on the Heart and most recently, Cherished Belonging. Learn more at homeboyindustries.org.