Tattooed with compassion

The words of Gregory Boyle have gathered my interest.  A friend pointed me to Boyle's book Tattoos on the Heart: the Power of Boundless Compassion, which wonderfully carries forth the notion that no single life matters less than another.  While some would contend that of course we’re all on equal footing and for anyone to think otherwise is ludicrous, even when media news blasts tend to be quite partial, Boyle’s stories still make me think.  He tells of his experiences as a Jesuit priest stationed within Los Angeles’s heaviest gang territory.  He tells of a boy called George, whose ceremony of baptism contained an especially difficult component in that immediately afterward Boyle would need to tell George about his brother’s death in the streets.  Yet the occasion presented a wonderful view of the Lord at work.  Whereas reaction to death there had always included rage and promises to avenge, this time 17-year-old George appeared different.  Boyle says George’s grief more resembled the heartbreak of God, in that George’s previously hardened gang posture had changed into quiet sobs and tender weeping clutched in his open palms.  Here I see the love of Jesus pouring through a priest whose compassion had room for everybody—gangster and nongangster alike.  Matthew 9:36 says Jesus had compassion on those who were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.  That's all of us.