In conversation with Richard Rohr on the Everything Belongs podcast, founder of Homeboy Industries Father Greg Boyle describes how love heals us:
On a podcast the other day I said, “Love never fails,” and the interviewer said, “Our listeners are going to think you’re naive.” And I thought, well, I don’t know how you prove that [love never fails] except to say, I think that if anybody stops to think about how that’s been operative in their life, they realize, in fact, in the end, it’s never failed. If it feels like it has, it’s just not the end.
Somehow we don’t have confidence in it. We think that it’s more savvy to not embrace love somehow—that your head is in the clouds at a time when we need to be doing some things that are concrete. I don’t think love cancels out concrete action. This is sort of the marriage of contemplation and action…. When the ego interrupts you, you try to catch yourself, so that you can return to sweetness…. Hold out for sweetness and life because that’s what a confidence in love as “never failing” will usher in—that kind of moment of connection and kinship.
I always talk about “cherishing,” because the word “love” sort of gets lost. Cherishing is love with its sleeves rolled up. It’s about really seeing people. At Homeboy, we want to create a place that’s safe, where people are seen, so that they can be cherished because that’s what is healing.
Boyle recounts how his organization came to believe that love and cherishing are the path to healing:
In the early days, we were saying, “Nothing stops a bullet like a job.” We thought an employed gang member would never return to prison. Then, as we started a school, we thought, “Well, an educated gang member won’t ever go back to prison,” but that was proving not true. Then we kind of landed, maybe 20 or 25 years ago (out of our 37 years), where we said, “No, a healed gang member will not ever re-offend.” Period. And it’s been born out as truthful, so that’s the emphasis.
We do all the other things: employment, here’s money in your pocket, a gainful job, education and all these other things like tattoo removal and therapy. All those things are secondary to the primary community of healing where people are receiving doses [of love] constantly, in a very repetitive way. It’s the repetitive nature of reassurance, affirmation, affection, hugging—all these things. We used to fret if somebody relapsed with drugs or returned to gang life for a moment or went to jail. We used to say, “Well, maybe they’ll come back.” Nobody says that now. Everybody says, “He’ll be back”—and they all come back. I’m not really aware of an exception. They’ll come back because once you’ve had a taste of having been cherished in a way that’s authentic, it’s so compelling that [you surrender to it].
Reference:
Adapted from Mike Petrow and Paul Swanson, cohosts, Everything Belongs, podcast, season 3, ep. 6, “Bonus: Fr. Richard and Greg Boyle Reflect on Lives Committed to Loving Action,” June 13, 2025. Available as MP3 audio download and PDF transcript.
Image credit and inspiration: Sankhadeep Barman, untitled (detail), 2019, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. The person lingers in awe, wholly present with the flowers, letting herself be consumed by their quiet beauty, choosing to behold and simply be with them.
Story from Our Community:
I’ve been struggling lately with how to engage lovingly with the world, specifically the country I love, but grace often comes in surprising ways. I recently had my hearing aids tuned up and was told by the audiologist to read aloud every day, because it promotes brain health as we age with hearing loss. So, I’ve been reading Father Richard’s Daily Meditations out loud every morning. What a joy for both my brain and spirit! It’s infinitely better than speed-reading these daily gifts.
—Cynthia C.
