In his book Tattoos on the Heart, Jesuit priest Greg Boyle writes about his work with gang members in Los Angeles. Tattoos is a beautiful book, full of stories both tragic and redemptive about his and other’s efforts to serve a population truly on the margins of American life. I am reading the book this semester with a group of Freshmen to whom I have been assigned as academic advisor. Yesterday, we discussed compassion, which Boyle believes, is at the heart of the Christian life. We have to be …

A number of years ago I came to believe in an absolute kind of way that God Is and that all things exist through Him. Prior to this time, I had believed in a God, sort of.  I was somewhat conscientious and observant of my own selective moral code.  That is, while I sometimes did the things that I considered morally relevant in the Church’s teaching, I usually did what I thought I could get away with. I went to Church and I said the words. I knew the prayers …