Greg Boyle Quotes

Kids are different from adults. They are not as developed as far as brain science, controlling impulses, and maturity, and fall prey to all kinds of pressures.

To embrace the strategy of Jesus is to be engaged in what Dean Brackley calls "downward mobility." Our locating ourselves with those who have been endlessly excluded becomes an act of visible protest. For no amount of our screaming at the people in charge to change things can change them. The margins don't get erased by simply insisting that the powers-that-be erase them. The trickle-down theory doesn't really work here. The powers bent on waging war against the poor and the young and the "other" will only be moved to kinship when they observe it. Only when we can see a community where the outcast is valued and appreciated will we abandon the values that seek to exclude.

Ours is a God who waits. So who are we not to?

On most days, if I'm true to myself, I just want to share my life with the poor, regardless of result. I want to lean into the challenge of intractable problems with as tender a heart as I can locate, knowing that there is some divine ingenuity here, "the slow work of God," that gets done if we're faithful.

Don't forget, you are the hero of your own story.

At its best, an injunction creates a kind of vigilant heat that moves kids toward the light.

You are so much more than the worst thing you've ever done.

Young people can change and grow. Every parent knows that.

I have never seen a hopeful person join a gang.

If there is a fundamental challenge within these stories, it is simply to change our lurking suspicion that some lives matter less than other lives.

We need the disruption of categories that lead us to abandon the difficult, the disagreeable, and the least likely to go very far.

I'm not opposed to success.

My church is in the detention facilities where I preside and celebrate the Eucharist. To me that's the church. That's the people of God.

Gangs are bastions of conditional love, and one of the ways to counteract it is to offer community, which will always trump gang, and that's what happens at Homeboy Industries.

If you are paying attention, then the day is going to be pretty joyful, and a lot of delight will fill it.

I'm the priest who has been mistaken for an ATM machine.

I want to be prophetic and take stands and stand with those on the margins, and I want to laugh as much as I can.

I don't save people. God saves people. I can point them in the right direction. I can say, 'There's that door. I think if you walked through it, you'd be happier than you are.'

I wouldn't trade my life for anybody's.

I kinda don't do guilt. I gave it up for Lent years ago.

Jesus says, "You are the light of the world." I like even more what Jesus doesn't say. He does not say, "One day, if you are more perfect and try really hard, you'll be light." He doesn't say, "If you play by the rules, cross your T's and dot your I's, then maybe you'll become light." No. He says, straight out, "You are light." It is the truth of who you are, waiting only for you to discover it. So, for God's sake, don't move. No need to contort yourself to be anything other than who you are.

The Church should say, 'I'm frightened that women will be ordained;' that's honest, say that. But don't say, 'It's a grave sin,' because that's nonsense.

It is an essential tenet of Buddhism that we can begin to change the world by first changing how we look at the world.

Does God feel like that same-sex marriage could happen? I don't think anybody who has a connection to God and God's understanding and depth of compassion who's gonna say 'no.'

The business of second chances is everybody's business.

People have started to see that 'smart on crime' rather than 'tough on crime' makes sense.

Apparently, FDR had a sign on his desk that read: "Let unconquerable gladness dwell." Our search to know what's on God's mind ends in the discovery of this same unconquerable gladness.

The desire of God's heart is immeasurably larger than our imaginations can conjure.

I think not everything that works helps, and not everything that helps works.

Even gang members imagine a future that doesn't include gangs.

Most employers just aren't willing to look beyond the dumbest or worst thing someone has done.

I know two L.A.s. Half my life was around the house my folks had for 46 years at 3rd and Norton. The other half was in Boyle Heights on the Eastside, working with gang members.

St. Paul challenges us to "dedicate ourselves to thankfulness" and so I will.

The wrong idea has taken root in the world. And the idea is this: there just might be lives out there that matter less than other lives.

God seems to be an unwilling participant in our efforts to pigeonhole Him.

I find consolation in a no doubt apocryphal story of Pope John XXIII. Apparently at night he'd pray: "I've done everything I can today for your church. But it's your Church, and I'm going to bed.

There is no 'them' and 'us.' There is only us.

All politics are local, and so in church.

W a gang member, and especially in a Latino gang, gets jumped in, and then he's given a name, and he has that name forever, but it's not so much the name as being called by name.