The POWER Of Compassion | Father Gregory Boyle Speech | Goalcast

After the unthinkable happened, Father Gregory Boyle had a choice to make, an important choice between compassion and hate...

Video Script:: 

once he came into my office and he said AG kicked me down with 20 bones yeah I said what do you need $20 for taking my lady to the movies I said well how old are you 12 I go 12 how old is your lady 16 I said 16 he goes yeah but she's short here's $20 and then he sort of loved you know picking up English expressions from you know commercials and TV one day he came in I think he had learned this from like a polo loco commercial and and he said AG you know what you are you're the real deal I remember there wasn't school the next day it was around 9:00 and was kind of a warm evening and Bethel was playing with his cousin they were two gang members standing in front of a dumpster smoking cigarettes and a van came in with two gang members with heavy weapons and they see the two gang members and they begin to open fire but Bette though did move and because he hesitated for even a second suddenly a very large bullet entered his side and traveled through his body and left the doctor who attended to him told me later just the sheer force of this traveling through his body the sheer reverberation of it had rendered him paralyzed from the waist down though it had never even touched his spine I went to the hospital and I sat there with the Beatles grandmother but an hour into the time that he was in the intensive care unit I could see through the glass as a team of doctors and nurses ran in there and pounded on his chest and begged and pleaded with his heart to cooperate and and it just wouldn't and he died now Betty Ito was precocious and smart and he was 12 years old and he was the real deal but two days later I knew who the two guys were in the van and it was excruciating for me to be unable to hate them because I knew them and I knew their stories and I knew the terror and I knew the torture that had darkened their lives I knew all that had happened to them and I knew that they also were the real deal they just hadn't found their way to a safe haven where healing happens things have happened to them that have darkened their lives forever until that is they find relief sanctuary a safe haven where healing can happen you have to heal before you can have hope how can we move from being separate and superior to connected and how then can we together be accountable to the invitation the invitation is to place ones fears in the cradle of loving-kindness all of us stare at our own shared ruin and then we walk away together all of us finding our true selves in a community of tenderness all of us essential allies to each other we find in fact our fundamental identity in each other each one of us the real deal and there are no exceptions to that do not forget who you are [Applause] you