I think we can all identify with that older brother, you know, the unfairness of somebody else getting what we think they don't deserve. And I think his pain and shame is that he's done everything right, so why don't I get more? So it seems that the father was celebrating with the youngest son in a way that he had never celebrated with the oldest son. And it's almost like, oh, well, you're here with me always and everything I have is mine. Well, that's great, daddy, but you know.
Fatted calf for me, thank you very much. I'm the one that's done everything well. And the father, the poor father, maybe he never thought of doing a fatted calf because he was just so every day happy with him. But I think, you know, for many of us... Maybe a lesson we can learn that our everyday love, the consistent love, is as loving as the wow moment. That only comes once or twice or whatever.
Welcome to Preach, a podcast from America Media on the art of Catholic preaching. I'm your host, Ricardo da Silva, a Jesuit priest from South Africa, associate editor at America Media. and also an Associate Pastor at the Church of St. Francis Xavier in New York City. In each episode, we take you into the minds and hearts of some of the finest preachers in the Catholic Church. We listen to their homilies, learn what makes them great,
and draw inspiration to keep preaching the good news. This week, I'm joined by Stephen Tully. Stephen joins us from South Africa, where his path to the priesthood has been anything but conventional. Born and raised in Durban in the KwaZulu-Natal province, he struggled through two failed years of college, first attempting a BSc, then making a semester's foray into pharmacy, before ultimately swapping textbooks for a military uniform.
and serving two years in the South African Defense Force as a chef. Returning to his studies, the third time was Achan. He earned a diploma in analytical chemistry, but that wasn't really his true calling. After a transformative encounter with Christians outside the Catholic Church reignited his faith, that led him to seek something deeper and drew him back to the Catholic Church with renewed conviction.
And so he entered the seminary and was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Durban. Today, Stephen is the parish priest or pastor, as we say in the U.S., in Belito, a thriving Catholic community on South Africa's east coast. He also serves as chairman and spiritual advisor of the Napier Center for Healing, a residential program helping unhoused individuals overcome addiction and rebuild their lives. Before arriving in Belito, he served in several parishes in the Archdiocese.
including as pastor of Emmanuel Cathedral in Durban, where he helped establish the Dennis Hurley Center, a vital outreach for the city's unhoused and marginalized people. Stephen, it's wonderful to welcome you to preach. Thank you. It's great to be here. Bit nervous, but always great to have something different to do.
well thank you for agreeing to our invitation of course the first time we met you were actually on retreat at the jesuit headquarters in auckland park in johannesburg that was the first time that i saw you and we didn't get to talk very much because Of course, you were in silence for much of the time. Yeah, it was a great time to meet because I've always found that Jesuits is a place where I could go deeper and to understand what God is actually calling me to.
It's just a space where you can kind of get to know God and get to know what is God calling you to do in life. You know, we've got to have meaning and purpose. And I find that's one of the places for me. So it's a great space to go back to. And Stephen, I also know that you've been involved with people on the margins of society. And I remember visiting first the Dennis Hurley Center. I don't think you were there anymore, but I remember visiting a couple of years ago.
and just being struck by the incredible ministry being done for the city's unhoused population. You know, it's very close to the cathedral, if I remember correctly. And this is just a space where people can come and receive an array of services. What provoked a greater concern for those on the margins for you? Well, I think I've always, in a sense, in a good way, I've always felt a bit marginalized myself for many reasons. We don't have to go there to be too embarrassing.
But I felt when I was the administrator at the cathedral, I was sleeping in my bed and at night I would hear on the pavement right outside, I would hear the shuffling of the people sleeping on the streets. I'd hear the police coming to harass them. I would hear the rubbish trucks coming in and just...
violating, you know, and taking their personal positions and rushing down every now and again. Anyway, with great people like Paddy Carney and others, we kind of got together and we thought, you know, we've got to do something. Archbishop Dennis Hurley had been there previously, and he had started various projects in the old parish center, the refugee pastoral care, and we had started in the old building a soup kitchen and a clinic.
But then we had the xenophobia crisis in 2008. And because we already knew many refugees as part of our parish, the cardinal agreed that we could open our parish center within 24 hours and within 24 hours we had 596 people there it was well organized because we were already connected and doing stuff and that was it sound that this
was an important ministry. And so it flowed from that. And with Paddy Carney and others, we were able to raise money to build a new building, which cost a huge amount, 32 and a half million. And it just snowballed into God's doing something based on the scripture from Isaiah 58, you know, I don't desire your sacrifice, I desire your love.
And now, with the deterioration of the city, it's needed more than ever. There's over 6,000 people on the streets. Anyway, I could talk forever about it, but it's... That's where the passion is. I can hear your passion. And we're going to have more time to talk about this new project, not so new anymore, but the project that you went on to after the Dennis Hurley Center, the Napier Center for Healing. And we'll talk a little bit about that.
in our conversation after your homily. So let's look at that. What are the readings that we're looking at for this fourth Sunday in Lent, year C? Of course, it's Letare Sunday. So we know, like in Advent, where we have Gaudete.
in lent we have letare two sundays for rejoicing per se yeah so i i think all three readings just explode the joshua the second corinthians are obviously the gospel they kind of I was actually kind of surprised how they all kind of link into the great joy of being a sinner and knowing that God is the one that just...
trashes the shame and the sin and has a celebration i mean you know who wants to celebrate with sinners well god and all of these readings just explode with this incredible energy so yeah That's where it's coming from. So just remind us, we're looking at, in the gospel, the account of the prodigal son. Yes. Or maybe the resentful brother, however you choose to think about that parable. Just remind us, what is that story? So the story is about the son.
kind of representing all of us. He takes his inheritance. Daddy, I want my money. So he goes off and he goes and does all kinds of things there. Your imagination go crazy what he was doing. And then he wastes all his money. All his friends run away. He comes to a sense.
he thinks well the only place i can go back to is the only person i know love from is my father so he decides to go back humbly and ask for the father's forgiveness and the father and this is the text that i'm going to be picking up on looks at him from a distance, and he is excited. And it's not this going on that you don't really understand how it can be possible because this guy...
took the Father's inheritance and trashed it. You know? So it's that incredible, pivotal moment in all of our lives that if we can understand that we are sinners. But that's nowhere near the end of the story. It's like the passion and death, the resurrection is forever. The love of the Father is like always a neighbor. And if we can live in that always ever celebration mode while we...
doing our sinfulness, not to encourage it, but to say, okay, I can get out of this. Others might not accept, but I can get out of this because the Father loves me. And then, of course, there's the older brother who… is kind of taken aback by his brother's return and can't quite understand why the father's throwing a party when the son has gone off and spent all his money.
tarnished his name and the family name and he can't deal with that and so we have this whole tussle between you know the two brothers and the love of the father But you're going to unpack that, I'm sure, for us in greater detail in homily and conversation. Well, as the Lord flies, yeah. But let's look at the audience that you're preaching to. Obviously, you work at the Napier Center for Healing, but you're also in a parish, in the parish of Belito, which I think is quite a different population.
to maybe the people who are in the Napier Center for Healing or in the Dennis Hurley Center. So just paint for us a picture of your parish in Belito that you say, quote, is amazing. It's amazing because it's a paradise, you know. I mean, it's right next to the sea. It's not a huge parish. So, you know, there's only about 500 people that come to mess on a Sunday over three messes.
and so with a smaller community it's more kind of exciting in a way because you can do things in that space it's like a middle class but there's some really wealthy people but you know our humanity is the constant Everybody suffers somehow. You know, I've been in a rural parish. I've been working on the streets of Durban, as it were. I go... And I have this passion for the people on the streets, but there's a common human thing going on. It has different nuances, like in the parish.
you know if i preach on a sunday i'm very well aware that there are some very wealthy people but they are wealthy on paper but not you know half their cars owned by the bank And many of the houses are owned by someone else. And they are struggling at the moment after COVID and with the economy in the country just to keep the money flowing.
I mean, suicide recently has become a big thing. Lots of people talking about it, thinking about it. And we're doing a series of hope in this year. And we've got a psychologist who's giving us great input as to doing hope. And we're discovering just how painful people's lives are. So it's that kind of living with shame thing, which we identify very much with the young, the son. It sounds like a great community and a community that...
is rich and ripe for ministry. So thank you for the work you do there. We're going to turn now to your homily, and I'm really looking forward to hearing that. We will now hear Stephen Tully's homily for the fourth Sunday of Lent, Letare Sunday, Year C, especially recorded for Preach. Have you ever really understood what it was like to be a sinful man, filled with shame? Let's read from our Gospel, Luke 15, 20.
Now picture yourself on the scene. So he left the place and went back to his father. While he was still a long way off, his father saw him, was moved with pity. He ran to the boy, clasped him in his arms, and kissed him tenderly. We could be this son or daughter. Where we have taken something and misused it. A kindness, maybe an inheritance like this man. And realize that, damn, I've really sinned. I need to get on my knees and go back. Grovel.
But this whole sense of the Father is just so amazing. And I wonder if we can try and feel it, not just understand it. Because the Father sees him. from a lower way off so it means that the father was always looking he's moved with pity and imagine an old man running towards the boy it's normally the other way around but here we have this
in my imagination, an old man with a heavy heart because the sun has disappeared. He doesn't know where he is. He sees him from a distance. He runs. He clasps him. So this is a loving embrace. So this is like a tight hold, not aggressive, but it's like you can feel it. And then he kisses him tenderly. It's almost like two different... emotions going on there. And this is just coming from a huge heart. And I wonder if this is something that we need to really focus on in our lives.
That no matter what we've done that makes us ashamed or makes us feel as if we're unworthy, there's always a Father, God, looking somewhere, even if we think he's far away. And he's moved with pity because he can see our craziness and our dilemma and our hurtful situation. And he runs to us, clasping and kissing gently. I think that's such an important moment for us to hold. But of course, there's a contrast. We have Luke 15.30. Isn't that great? Luke 15.30.
15, 20, and then 10 verses later, we have the craziness of the big brother. And big brother is not really happy with what's going on. And then the father comes and tries to reconcile the big brother. He says, but for this son of yours, this is verse 30, when he comes back after swallowing up your property, he and his woman, you kill the calf.
We have been fattening. So we have this whole situation with the older brother saying, but how can you do this? How can you go running after this boy clasping him and kissing? I mean, all the other things about the celebration, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But we have this other element where they say, but you shouldn't be doing this. And I think, you know, for many of us, when we know we've done a wrong, and we grapple with coming back and have an experience with the Father which is unique and deeply personal, there are always going to be others who don't accept us. that we were never able to explain.
And I think this is so often, you know, in the work that I do at the Napier Center, so often these guys are going from zero on the streets. And we say, you go from zero to hero, not because of the people around you, but because... God has given you an opportunity to rethink your lives and move on. So the first thing I think that we need to ponder on our readings today is that our redemption and our confidence
for a future, comes 100% from God. And if we can get our mind into that set, then we can hold strong when others are doubting us and putting us apart. And we see this beautifully in the first line of our first reading of the Sunday from Joshua. It says, takes away the shame. Isn't that amazing? So even though other people want to name and shame, if we have in our mind, I have really...
tried to get out of this thing. I've really tried to better my life. If it's drugs, if it's infidelity, if it's dishonesty at work. Whatever it may be, if we are aware of our sinfulness, we will feel the shame. And that's an important part of our redemption. But if we can remember that God... He says, no, I'm going to take your shame away. Give it to me. I want it. I'm like a shame suction. I'm going to take it away.
And if somebody else wants to bring all your nonsense, all their nonsense, because they're not in the right space, we don't have to even judge them. It's okay. It's their story. And this is where 2 Corinthians comes in. He says, creation. So if we can start understanding and living the fact that we are new creation, and then he goes on to say, so we are ambassadors for Christ. So the way I feel it is that sin
fathers with credible love, crazy people who can't accept us. But we go back to Christ, our Lord Jesus. You're a new creation. I've taken away your shame. And not only that, next step. I can now use you. I can use you. You are now my ambassador. It's not like a random person. You're now the person I need more than anyone else.
You are my ambassador. So we are ambassadors for Christ. It is as though God were appealing through us. I mean, isn't that ridiculous? I mean, I'm the sinner. I've done all this crazy stuff. And now he's saying, oh, just forget about all that. Don't worry about all the other crazy people who can't accept you. You're not my ambassador. I need you. I mean, that's like, hello.
I didn't think I was needed for anything. I was busy feeding pigs, as it were. And now you're saying you want me to be ambassador? God must be weird. And he is. He's weird when he loves because he just doesn't know how not to love. He's like addicted to love. We're all addicted to something, Richard Rohr tells us, and God is addicted to loving us regardless. And if we can understand, I think, for all of us, if we can understand that God sucks that shame away.
that regardless of what goes on around us, who can't accept it for now, they're on their journey, we don't have to judge them. In the sense that if somebody else does accept us, if we can have the attitude... Oh, you're accept. I have hurt you. Like a parent who's been hurt by a son who's wasted money on drugs. But if they can then accept, that's the bonus.
That's not what we deserve. It's our bonus. There's a wonderful Japanese art called, and I can't even say it correctly, Kintsuji. It's an ancient... century-old art of repairing broken pottery with gold. And I just can't get away from the beauty. of that kind of art because it's a vessel that breaks and you it's always broken differently you can't have a consistent breakage and yet golden thread they take apparently gold powder
And they put it with resin. And they put these pieces together. And it's a unique, beautiful, and very valuable vessel. That's us. That's us. All our broken pieces. God. by his running, clasping, holding, kissing, is gently putting us all together until we are this incredible vessel, the ambassadors for our Lord Jesus. So for me...
This Lautare Sunday is a time of knowing our sinfulness. Oh, we've got to know our sinfulness. But it's nowhere near the end of the story. It's only the beginning of becoming God's ambassadors. It's only worry about how much we are loved by God, not by what other people think and say about us, of the sins we have committed and we are shameful about. God bless.
That was Stephen Tully for Preach. After the break, we'll hear from Stephen how working with people on the margins of society has helped shape his understanding of the parable of the prodigal son. Stay with us. Stephen, thank you for your homily. We don't always hear, especially I think in Catholic preaching, We don't always hear a lot of quoting from the scripture itself or reading the scriptures themselves in the context of the homily, in the Protestant tradition.
You would often hear a few verses and then the preacher would speak a little bit about those verses. And then he or she would give us another few verses and then speak a bit about them. And you kind of did that today, but you also did it in such a way. that you retold the story, right? Is this a strategy that you employ regularly? I don't know if I do purposely, but you know, my attitude is that...
Scripture was written by real people with real issues and real pain. And they wrote from this overwhelming desire to understand God in their pain. So when we read these scriptures with Joshua, Corinthians, it's coming from that space and we all have pain. So if we can stick with divine word and try and connect. Our human experience, somehow, if we can live the gospel in our present time, yeah, I mean, how can it not be? How can we not be part of a gospel? It's not a foreign thing.
It's our everyday word of God. I mean, God speaks, as you and I know, when we... go along and we got pain and suffering we think of a scripture why because this divine word connecting with our pain and sorrow or joy or whatever so when we start reading about running and clasping and kissing That's all our everyday stuff. If we don't have it, we're desiring it. So this course that I'm doing with spiritual accompaniment.
and gospel contemplation and imaginative thing is just so explosive. Because if you put yourself into any gospel, any experience, you know, what word touches you? Lectio Divina. What word touches you? Well, that means... Something deep down is corresponding with some divine word, so let's sit with it and see what God wants to do with it.
You mentioned Lectio Divina and imaginative contemplation, and it kind of felt like you were using both techniques, as it were, because, you know, Lectio Divina in that you picked certain phrases that you wanted us to hear, and so you repeated them. And then imaginative contemplation because you helped us to enter into that story, right? And so there was almost a melding of techniques there.
But you did it in such a way as to retell the story, not to come to any conclusions about it, but simply to take us anew into that story in a way that perhaps just simply reading the gospel wouldn't have elicited. You had to pray with it. I think by that exercise of retelling the story, you are demonstrating in some ways for your parishioners or for your congregation, for the audience, that you've prayed with us, that you've made this real, that this has touched your story.
How important is, and I don't mean to lead you here, but how important is prayer or reflection on the scriptures for you? What do you actually do during the week to prepare? So I think... I'd be using a bit of technology. So I copy the text onto my iPad and I start to think and pray. So as I try and do it Monday, Tuesday.
And then, you know, with all this modern technology, you can highlight it in different colors. You can make it bold. So I'm playing around with that. So I went to a color. Shame for me is pink. I put pink in there. So I play with it by way of trying to resonate with something deeper that I don't really understand. I go through all those scriptures and I highlight bits and pieces and then obviously try and pray with it.
I also like to sleep with the scripture. Tell me more. Do you put it under your pillow? No, not quite. But you know, we have a Saturday evening mass. So I would have done my preparation or the rest of it. And then hopefully I can have a little siesta on a Saturday afternoon, but I have it with my scriptures and I've kind of prepared my homily and I kind of go to sleep with the Lord in a sense.
Hmm, maybe I put too much of myself in this. Do you want to change my mind? I'm not really sure if I'm doing it properly, but I just feel I'm trying to do it honestly. And from the core of who I am in my sinful weakness kind of stuff. And also, you know, as you might, you know, I think many priests would know, every congregation you go to, there's a different feel.
So a Saturday evening is a different feel to a Sunday morning to a Sunday evening. So the homily isn't exactly the same. It's kind of tweaked. You might use different examples because of... You know, as I said, I'm from a small parish, so you might know, okay, Sunday evening, these are generally the people who just want to get mess over and done with. I'm sorry for you, but I'm not going to do short mess for you. And then Sunday morning, it's the kids.
you know, screaming. I love the kids, you know, making noise. So you want to bring that in. We have our children's mess. We kind of contextualize there. Sunday evening is like the tired people that just want to get over it. So you've got to kind of tweak it. That's something we haven't really spoken about on the show, but I think that's valuable because so many preachers, I think, in my experience, you know, have prepared their text and then just delivered it in front of.
for the many masses that they have. And that's understandable because there's so much work that a priest has over the weekend. But actually understanding that you need to tailor, not the message, but maybe tailor the examples that you can keep the basic structure, but you need to make a few tweaks depending on the congregation and the audience is really important.
Thank you for bringing that because I don't think we've spoken about that before. Let's look at the parable of the prodigal son. Sure. It's been reimagined in so many different ways, you know, in art, in film, in… spiritual writings. When did it come alive for you? Well, you know, if a passage is going to come alive, it has to come from a very deep personal place.
And for me, I never knew my father until I was 18 years old. So a father running towards me is, I've never had that experience. And I've lived my life wanting it and longing for it. Every time I read this scripture, I mean, the younger son with the pigs, yeah, I can do that every day of my life. You know, and I've been there, done that. Hello, pigs. But when it comes to the father running.
Now that is like, what? Why are you running? You didn't even want to get to know me. Now he's not only running, he's clasping and kissing tenderly things that my father never did for me. He was a UK... upper proper you know don't touch me you know we don't do this kind of stuff so i think our own unique experiences for each and this is just i'm one of eight billion so
Everybody has their unique experience. So when you, Ricardo, or anybody reads the gospel, what comes out to you is a Ricardo moment. You can't highlight this is all about Stephen. But to link with my own painful struggle and joy and all the rest of it and kind of present it in a way that hopefully the way I get to know the people around me kind of resonate. Okay, I know.
I have my pain and shame, but I'm sure everybody has pain and shame. So let's try and flavor it with your own, contextualize it in your own. Let us journey together with this gospel. It's not about the saints saying this or as helpful as that can be. But if we come to Mass and we have an encounter with our Lord Jesus in the readings and then in the Eucharist, and we're going thinking,
Wow, you know, I came in feeling like, you know, I wanted to jump off a bridge. But now I realize that, you know, I don't have to jump off a bridge now because I'm loved. Because I'm loved. I might be stinking, I've got tacky clothes, I've got a brother that doesn't love me, but there's one person that does, and that's enough for me. Yeah, I mean, I clearly identify with you.
In a direct way, because I didn't meet my own father until I was 33. Wow. Yeah. And I say that simply because by you sharing your story, it's given me permission to share mine. Right. And I think sometimes. As preachers, we can be afraid to tell a little bit about ourselves or to be a little bit vulnerable because we think it's self-indulgent, but actually it can serve another.
if it comes from that place of authenticity and from that place of prayer that has considered what it is that I'm sharing. And so I think that's one thing. And the other piece of that for me, This is just a reflection that I had off of what you said is, I've always struggled, therefore, to identify with God as Father. And so that image of a God as a Father or a God. who runs to their child, that's always been a struggle. And it's something that I've had to engage in prayer.
so that I could find a father in God. But also then it helped me to explore the different aspects of God. And certainly given the mother I have who... is certainly addicted to love, to use the phrase that you had in your homily. God can be a very loving mother too. And so it's helped me to connect with that. I wonder if we can look at, you know, we've looked at the love of the Father.
And the shame of the son. And obviously, along with the shame, the repentance, right? He comes back repentant, wanting to be forgiven. And his father's like, of course, I'm going to forgive you. You're my son. What about the older brother? I think we sometimes, to our detriment, leave him out a little bit too much of our reflection. You know, what is his pain and shame? Where does that stem from?
I think we can all identify with that older brother, you know, the unfairness of somebody else getting what we think they don't deserve. And I think his pain and shame is that he's done everything right. So why don't I get more? Because he was complaining about not being hugged and, you know, that kind of demonstrative thing. He speaks about the fatted calf.
So it seems that the father was celebrating with the younger son in a way that he had never celebrated with the older son. And it's almost like, oh, well, you're here with me always and everything I have in mind. Well, that's great, daddy, but you know. Fataka for me, thank you very much. I'm the one that's done everything well. So the sense of, you know, I've tried hard and still, I don't think I'm the favorite one. And the father, the poor father.
Maybe he never thought of doing a fatted calf because he was just so every day happy with him. This was like an extraordinary bipolar moment, you know. Yeah, and I mean, not having any siblings myself, I find that… a difficult thing to identify with again, but I've certainly seen children even... older children, not just younger kids, who find it really difficult because they think that their parent loves one more than the other, right? And is there this
forgetfulness. And sometimes parents even admit this, to be honest, right? Sometimes parents are like, oh yeah, I get on better with this, you know, X rather than Y. They'll always say, oh, but I love both my children equally. But there's this sense that maybe this love... that has now been shown so demonstrably, effusively, for the younger brother who went off and squandered his life. The parent doesn't feel that love in the same way for this one who has been faithful.
all along. There's a sense of maybe they've forgotten that they are also loved and have always been loved and will always be loved. And if they were to go off and squander their life's worth and inheritance... the parent would be welcoming them with open arms too. You know, as you were saying that, Ricardo, I was thinking,
You know, maybe a thought for the elder brother would be, well, I'm now going to go and feed the pigs, as it were, and I'll wait and see if my father's going to run and love me. There won't be much of a celebration because it's all gone now. But I mean, it's almost like I don't want all this goodness. It's like too good to be true. The everydayness is not enough. I want to have a wow moment. He wasn't having a wow moment.
But I think, you know, for many of us, maybe a lesson we can learn that our everyday love, the consistent love, is as loving as the wow moment. That only comes once or twice or whatever. But our everyday love is actually the constant. Because if you think of the older brother, because he was consistent, there was a fetid cough.
There was a robe. There was a ring. There were sandals. And if that was a conversation between the younger brother and the older brother, not out of jealousy, but just out of awareness. Do you know, younger brother, what it was like? I'm sorry if I feel jealous, but this is where I'm coming from. And imagine, you know, what an incredible conversation.
There could have been, if you continue, the father sitting on the sideline. I mean, there must be nothing greater for a father to see how siblings who were fighting can be reconciled with each other. I think this can often happen with the older child in the family, but it can happen with anybody, really. We often feel that we need to earn or prove our merit and worth, right, in order to be worthy of love.
And that's just not how the Father's grace works at all in the story. Exactly. And of course, that's an analog for God's grace. There's no meriting or proving here. It's just unmerited, unconditional giving. Because he's an addict to love. An addict. He just can't, yeah? Let's turn now to the work that you do because you work with a number of people on the margins at the Napier Center for Healing.
Tell me a little bit about the Napier Center for Healing and maybe how your work there has shaped the way you understand the story of the prodigal son, the addicted to love father or the resentful brother. yeah so the napier center for healing came about because at the dennis hurdy center we were able to get to know the people on the streets and when we went about asking what what we could do for them
They said we want rehab and employment. So we got them into rehab. They came out of rehab. And within a month, they were back on the street. So we knew that we needed more. So Napier Center for Healing. was conceptualized and it's a six to eight month residential program where they can come from the rehabilitation detoxification and now Continuity rehabilitation, family reunification, but specifically to get them skilled enough to become self-supporting. So when they leave...
The idea is that they are not dependent on their families or they become productive citizens. So we talk about going from zero to hero. So it's very much like the prodigal son who was with the pigs. For these guys, that's our parameter. We don't accept anybody who can afford it because there are other institutes. We fundraise and we get money for them because they don't have the money. So they come in.
And we said, fine, you're from the streets. You've already done what that younger brother has done. You've realized I need to change and I'm crawling back. And Napier Center was saying, okay, we're going to be this loving father. So we have a house mother and a house father to have a family feeling that they come into a family setting. So when we accept somebody, we say, will this person fit into our present family?
structure of the people that are there and then they come in and we kind of nurture them this peer mentorship and things like that to help them continue their healing and we don't insist that they have to be catholic or any denomination we even had two muslims coming in and we send them off to ramadan if they want to go because it's not about religion it's about understanding god the god of the understanding
And we do this family reunification because that's the older brother story coming on. How do they go back into a family that was toxic? For all we know in this story of the prodigal son, maybe the young son left because... This older brother was just an arrogant, horrible person to be with. And that's why he ran away.
We don't know. There's all kinds of reasons why people run away. But when he comes back, he still has to deal with that older brother. So we do kind of family unification, the family visit. We tell him, you know.
When you guys come back, you've got to be careful about this and that. So they go away for a weekend during the six to eight months, and then they will come back to us, be debriefed. How'd it go? Is it going to be conducive? What are the triggers if you're going to leave here permanently?
Is that a good space, a safe space for you? You know, you can go back to the elder brother, but if he's the toxic person that made you run away, stuff's better to be done. It's striking to me just the parallels between. the work you do at the Napier Center for Healing or the work that so many institutions around the world do in this regard and how that maps onto the scriptures.
especially given all that we spoke about at the beginning of our conversation with the Word of God in the Scripture and the Word of God in our lives or our experience. So I want to thank you so much for... unpacking that with us today. It's been a joy to have you. And I look forward to seeing you again when I'm back in South Africa. That'd be great. Thanks for joining us, Stephen. You promised me a meal. I've already got the restaurant in mind. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Okay. America's paying.
Thank you for listening to Preach. You can find the readings and a link to the transcript of Stephen's homily in our show notes. This podcast is made possible by the generous support of the Compelling Preaching Initiative, a project of Lilly Endowment, Inc. Preach is produced by me and Maggie Van Doorn. Grace Lenahan offered production assistance. This episode is engineered by Frank Tewson, who also designed the theme score and composed original music for the podcast.
Sebastian Gomes is our executive producer. We recorded in the William J. Loschut studio in New York City. You can follow me on X and Instagram at RICDSSJ. That's R-I-C-D-S-S-J. Also, please help us grow the show by leaving a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform. And as always, if you love Preach, we have even more to offer you on America Magazine's website. Keep informed, even inspired about your Catholic faith.
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