Two young Eucharistic saints. Sunday Reflections, Corpus Christi, Year C

 

Blessed Carlo Acutis

3 May 1991 - 12 October 2006

Beatified 10 October 2020; to be canonized 7 September 2025

[Wikipedia; photo]

In the countries where this blog is read the Solemnity of Corpus Christi is celebrated on Sunday 22 June rather than on Thursday 19 June, the Thursday after Trinity Sunday being the traditional day.

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan,)

Readings (English Standard Version, Catholic Edition: England & Wales, India, Scotland) 

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Gospel Luke 9:11-17 (English Standard Version, Anglicised)

At that time: Jesus spoke to the crowd of the kingdom of God and cured those who needed healing. Now the day began to wear away, and the Twelve came and said to him, ‘Send the crowd away to go into the surrounding villages and countryside to find lodging and get provisions, for we are here in a desolate place.’ But he said to them, ‘You give them something to eat.’ They said, ‘We have no more than five loaves and two fish — unless we are to go and buy food for all these people.’ For there were about five thousand men. And he said to his disciples, ‘Make them sit down in groups of about fifty each.’ And they did so, and made them all sit down. And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing over them. Then he broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd. And they all ate and were satisfied. And what was left over was picked up, twelve baskets of broken pieces.

Léachtaí i nGaeilge

                     

Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati

6 April 1901 - 4 July 1925

Beatified 20 May 1990; to be canonized 7 September 2025

[Wikipedia; photo]

I've told the story here before of a German woman I met in Canada in 1997. I was visiting Irish friends and through them was invited to give a talk to a prayer group. After the talk I was having coffee with the woman who had gone to Canada from Germany in her younger days. She was a Lutheran then. For a long time she had been thinking of becoming a Catholic but could not take the final step. One weekday afternoon she felt unsettled about this and went for a walk. She happened to be passing a Catholic church and went in to pray. While she was there, a group of teenage boys, around the same age as Blessed Carlo Acutis above who died aged 15, who came into the church went up to the front, genuflected before the Blessed Sacrament, knelt down and prayed silently for a few minutes. Then they got up, genuflected again and went out.

That was the moment of grace for the woman that led her to decide to become a Catholic. God spoke to her through a group of teenage boys whom she didn't know and who, quite possibly, hadn't even noticed her.

Blessed Carlo and Blessed Pier Giorgio had many things in common, though they were born 90 years apart. Both were Italian, though Carlo was born in England but grew up in Italy. Both grew up in affluent families but their parents were not particularly devout Catholics. Yet both from their childhood had a sense of God's love for them and an awareness of the poor whom they helped from their pocket-money and from befriending them. They also developed a life of prayer centred on the Holy Eucharist. Carlo from his young days would visit the Blessed Sacrament on his way to and from school and befriend beggars he met on the way.

Pier Giorgio sometimes spent the whole night in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament during his university days.

Both Pier Giorgio and Carlo brought persons much older than themselves to know Jesus Christ. The story of Carlo's influence on Rajesh Mohur, a Hindu immigrant from Mauritius to Italy, is inspiring. And Carlo was somewhat of a 'geek' when it came to the internet, developing sites devoted to Eucharistic miracles and apparitions of Our Lady. 

Both Pier Giorgio and Carlo died within days of a very painful serious illness being diagnosed, In Pier Giorgio's case polio, which he probably got from a poor woman whom he had been visiting, and in Carlo's case leukaemia.

These two young men truly believed in the presence of Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, body, blood, soul and divinity. They took to heart the words of Jesus in today's Communion Antiphon: Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him (John 6:37). So did the teenage boys in Canada whose quiet faith led the German woman to the Catholic Church and faith in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, the reality that today's feast celebrates.

There is a wealth of material online about these two young men on. The video below is one I have watched a number of times. Each time it has uplifted me and drawn me into prayer.

Carlo Acutis Web Missionary (Original version with subtitles)

Traditional Latin Mass

Second Sunday after Pentecost

The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 06-22-2025 if necessary).

Epistle: 1 John 3:13-18. Gospel: Luke 14:16-24.

Christ in Agony on the Cross

El Greco [Web Gallery of Art]

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren (1 John 3:16; Epistle).