Father Greg Boyle writes in his book, Tattoos on the Heart, that he indexed the word “sinner” in Scripture scholar Marcus Borg’s work and it said “see outcast.” His conclusion: “This was a social grouping of people who felt wholly unacceptable. The world had deemed them disgraceful and shameful, and this toxic shame, as I have mentioned before, was brought inside and given a home in the outcast” (Boyle 70). Father Greg “G” Boyle’s idea of shame is a pertinent idea throughout his book. Therefore, the means by which shame is cleansed from a person becomes pertinent as well. “G” prescribes large and continuous doses of the compassion that was withheld when the shame had crept into their souls. The life lesson that compassion heals shame is seen through father Greg Boyle's actions with the homies, the other people’s interactions with the …show more content…
After they had been housing the homeless, illegal immigrants for some time, the congregation of the Sunday mass had begun to complain about the smell. Noticing that this is not what compassion is, he helped the congregation to a different view of the smell. Instead of it smelling because of the immigrants, they changed their view to it being the smell of a compassionate commitment. Afterwards he notes, “The packed church roars with laughter and a newfound kinship that embraced someone else's as their own. The stink in the church hadn’t changed, only how the folks saw it” (Boyle 74). Father “G” provides many more glimpses into the power of compassion and its healing properties, but in order to make sure that it is indeed the compassion doing this healing and not just because Father Greg is an amazing human being, who truly embodies what God wants of us all, we can look toward what other’s in the book had accomplished with amazing and awesome levels of