72 pages • 2 hours read
Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion
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Everyone Is Worthy of Redemption
Redemption is a critical theme evident in every chapter of Tattoos on the Heart. As a Jesuit priest, Boyle extends his understanding of the redemptive power of Christ towards every aspect of his life. Boyle’s desire to help the marginal and less fortunate redeem themselves in society underlay his creation of Homeboy Industries, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping gang members change their lives for the better through education and employment opportunities. When Boyle left his mission trip in Bolivia, he could have asked to serve anywhere. Boyle, however, specifically asked to work with those who needed redemption most and happily began work in Los Angeles’ gang territory. Unlike society at large, which wrote gang members off as monsters incapable of redemption and change, Boyle approached gang members with open arms, offering them the one thing they didn’t expect: respect.
After Boyle showers help and hope onto gang members, they all begin to excel in their various personal endeavors. To this effect, Boyle’s outreach efforts show that demonizing gang members and ostracizing them from society only makes matters worse for everyone. More than anything, Boyle shows in the narrative that the gang members themselves want change and will actively strive for it when given the chance. One clear example of this takes place with Pedro. On the day of Pedro’s brother’s funeral, Boyle picked Pedro up, and Pedro proceeded to tell Boyle a dream he had the night prior. In the dream, Pedro and Boyle were sitting in a pitch-black room together. Next, Boyle picked up a flashlight and shined it on the room’s light switch. Pedro explained to Boyle that he perceived the dream to mean that Boyle could show him the way to goodness, but it was up to Pedro to make the choice to turn the light on. In other words, the dream is about God’s redemption. Boyle’s presence in the dream is symbolic of Boyle’s presence in Homeboy Industries—he’s there to show the way toward goodness and redemption. Ultimately, though, it is up to Pedro to reach out and turn the light on, meaning Pedro must do the actual work of accepting redemption and thereby brining God’s light into his life. By working with Boyle, Pedro and others at Homeboy Industries prove time and time again that with hard work redemption is absolutely possible for any homie or homegirl who desires true change.
The Transformative Power of Compassion
Throughout the book, Boyle shows compassion to every single homie and homegirl he encounters, which makes tangible differences in each of their lives. Boyle claims that society drills the notion of unworthiness into the minds of the poor and marginal until they accept it; it is a cycle that only further begets itself. But according to Boyle, this cycle can be broken by showing compassion to those who are shunned by the rest of society. This can be accomplished by helping them and treating them like equals. Boyle uses the anecdote of the church’s smell to further illustrate this. This theme occurs against the backdrop of the many trials that Dolores Mission Church faced in its earlier days, such as bomb threats and vandalism. At one point, however, the church harbored as many as 100 homeless immigrants. Some of Boyle’s parishioners began to complain of the smell of the church, so Boyle asked them a series of questions that were meant to make them think logically and compassionately about how one faces supposed adversity. Boyle first asked his parishioners why they thought the homeless were allowed to stay at the church in the first place. This seemingly simple question prompted parishioners to see that God’s compassion allowed the homeless to sleep in the church. Boyle’s follow-up question, about what the church smelled like now that the parishioners knew that the homeless sleeping there was God’s will, helped to reframe the topic of compassion. In fact, the parishioners changed their view of the homeless and said that the church smelled like roses. Though the church obviously didn’t smell like roses, Boyle prompted the congregation to rethink what compassion looks like on a daily basis, and how they might apply compassion to adversity. For Boyle, compassion should transcend all trivialities, for compassion is beautiful and worthwhile.
Only through compassion can homies and homegirls be reminded of the greatness inside of them as well, so Boyle spares no opportunity to be compassionate to anyone he knows or meets, for Boyle believes that compassion is the only way to break through the racism, sexism, and hate that can be found within our society. Compassion is the path to kinship, which to Boyle is the true agenda of God: to bring humanity together. Boyle’s compassionate efforts to help those around him lead directly to their societal and spiritual redemptions, and thus, compassion is a theme within the book that closely intertwines with its sister theme of redemption.
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