Easter Sunday: Our True Inheritance
BY FR. GREG BOYLE, S.J. | April 17, 2022
Today’s Readings
Reflexión en Español
Jose got up to speak at the podium in a gym filled with teenagers. He is 37 years old. 20 of those years have been spent behind bars. He retrieves his first memory. “I’m five years old. And I keep standing in between my dad and my mom while he keeps beating her.” The father continues to swat the kid away, but Jose keeps returning. Finally, the father goes to the kitchen and gets the boiling pot of “frijoles” on the stove and dumps it on his son. The entire gym gasps. “All my skin peeled off. I didn’t go to the hospital, cuz my dad said, ‘Nobody snitches in this house.’” Jose is first arrested at ten years old, for selling drugs for his father. He returns home, doesn’t want to sell drugs anymore and so the father throws Jose out of the house. He is now eleven and homeless. He joins a gang.
“I am grateful to my father for teaching me how not to be one,” Jose says. “I cherish my boys and tell them how much I love them. I play hide and seek. My boys taught me how cuz I never knew. I love them as I never was.”Poet David Whyte tells us, “to remember the other world in this world is to live in your true inheritance.” The Risen Christ cannot be found among the dead. Instead, the resurrection locates us in the here and now. We are only saved, after all, in the present moment. None of us will live forever, but we can surely live “in the forever.” The Risen Life invites us to a full participation in our true inheritance—allowing ourselves to be taught the game of hide and seek when our childhood has been denied us.
For Reflection:
- How is the resurrection of Christ calling you to be present in the moment—to be saved in the here and now?
Father Gregory Boyle a Jesuit priest is the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry program in the world. Born and raised in Los Angeles and Jesuit priest, from 1986 to 1992 Fr. Boyle served as pastor of Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights. Dolores Mission was the poorest Catholic parish in Los Angeles that also had the highest concentration of gang activity in the city.
Thank you, Father Greg, for your wise words. May the Lord always bless you.
Father Greg Boyle takes the resurrection seriously. Our goal is to transform the world now. Resurrection takes place right in front of us as we see the joy of Christ bloom in each heart and then take that bloom to all we meet. The little transformations of kindness, generosity, goodness, peace, joy, patience, dignity, and many other gifts of the Holy Spirit which make our society filled with love and hope. These transformations bring love to the world in which we live. All the people praying for and helping Ukraine to transform and live in peace help this world to be a better place. May the work of Father Boyle flourish and help us appreciate how resurrection is with us now and always.
I’ve enjoyed your daily reflections on the Reflections this Lent, Dr. Knight. Have a blessed Easter!
Thanks Greg. Happy Easter to all at Homeboy Industries.