St Pier Giorgio Frassati mountain climbing in 1924
Like Pope Pius XI, St Pier Giorgio loved to climb mountains and, like Pope St John Paul II, he loved to ski.
Readings
(Jerusalem
Bible: Australia, Ireland, New Zealand)
Readings (English
Standard Version, Catholic Edition: England & Wales, India, Scotland)
Readings (New
American Bible: Philippines, USA)
Gospel Luke 14:25-33 (English Standard
Version, Anglicised)
At that time: Great crowds accompanied Jesus, and he turned and said to them, ‘If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, and wife and children, and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, “This man began to build and was not able to finish.” Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.’
Léachtaí i nGaeilge
This Sunday Pope Leo will canonise two Italians who died young, Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati (6 April 1901 – 4 July 1925) and Blessed Carlo Acutis (3 May 1991 – 12 October 2006). Instead of commenting on the Gospel, since these two young men lived the Gospel, I'll share from what I've posted before about them.
In the first week of June 2015 I went on a pilgrimage from Ireland to northern Italy with members of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association. On our first morning there we visited the Shroud of Turin. When we entered the cathedral proper I saw on one of the side-altars to my left a portrait I was familiar with, that of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati. I was probably the only one in our group who noticed it and whose heart leaped with joy on seeing it. I went over to pray, not realising at the time that under the altar was the tomb of this young man who when he died was only one-third of the age that I was then. When we were back on the bus I was happy to tell my fellow pilgrims about this most attractive of saintly people of our times.
Tomb of Blessed Pier Giorgio
Thanks to St John Paul II, who beatified Pier Giorgio on 20 May 1990, the 4oth anniversary of my First Holy Communion, I had come to know something of the inspiring life of this young man, born into privilege but who had both a great zest for life and a great love for the poor, the latter something his family knew very little about, though they had seen signs of it in his childhood. One time when a woman with a young son came begging at the Frassati home Pier Giorgio noticed that the boy had no shoes. He took off his own and gave them to the youngster. There is a very good summary of his life here.
St John Paul saw the importance of bringing to our attention the lives of saints of our times, from every walk of life. In his homily at the beatification Pope John Paul, who all his life as a priest had a special love for young adults, said:
Faith and charity, the true driving forces of his existence, made him active and diligent in the milieu in which he lived, in his family and school, in the university and society; they transformed him into a joyful, enthusiastic apostle of Christ, a passionate follower of his message and charity. The secret of his apostolic zeal and holiness is to be sought in the ascetical and spiritual journey which he traveled; in prayer, in persevering adoration, even at night, of the Blessed Sacrament, in his thirst for the Word of God, which he sought in Biblical texts; in the peaceful acceptance of life’s difficulties, in family life as well; in chastity lived as a cheerful, uncompromising discipline; in his daily love of silence and life’s 'ordinariness'.
It is precisely in these factors that we are given to understand the deep well-spring of his spiritual vitality. Indeed, it is through the Eucharist that Christ communicates his Spirit; it is through listening to the word that the readiness to welcome others grows, and it is also through prayerful abandonment to God’s will that life’s great decisions mature. Only by adoring God who is present in his or her own heart can the baptized Christian respond to the person who 'asks you for a reason for your hope' (1 Pt 3:15). And the young Frassati knew it, felt it, lived it. In his life, faith was fused with charity: firm in faith and active in charity, because without works, faith is dead (cf. James 2:20).
Pope St John Paul gave the name 'The Man of the Eight Beatitudes' to St Pier Giorgio. He said in 1989: I, too, in my youth, felt the beneficial influence of his example and, as a student, I was impressed by the force of his Christian testimony.
In a message to the youth of Turin in 2010 Pope Benedict XVI said: Like [Pier Giorgio], discovered that it is worth it to commit oneself for God and with God, to respond to his call in the fundamental decisions and the daily ones, even when it is costly.
In his Message for World Youth Day 2014 Pope Francis quoted the young man from Turin: As Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati once said, 'To live without faith, to have no heritage to uphold, to fail to struggle constantly to defend the truth: this is not living. It is scraping by. We should never just scrape by, but really live'.
Blessed Pier Giorgio's last climb, 7 June 1925
Blessed Pier Giorgio died from polio, after a week of great pain. He very probably contracted it from some of the poor whom he visited in their homes. His family were astonished at the huge numbers of poor people who lined the streets of Turin for his funeral.
This young man is such a great model of discipleship for all, not only young people, because he took the words of Jesus to heart: Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all. He enjoyed life. He had a very strong sense of justice along with a real awareness of the needs of the person in front of him. Charity is not enough: we need social reform, he used to say. He was, in the words of St John Paul II, a joyful, enthusiastic apostle of Christ, the kind of follower of Jesus that Pope Francis frequently called us to be.
St Pier Giorgio lived each moment. In his homily at the beatification Pope St John Paul II highlighted something very important: his daily love of silence and life’s 'ordinariness'. This is where we find God.
Earlier this year Pope Francis described Blessed Carlo Acutis as a young saint of and for our times, (who) shows you, and all of us, how possible it is in today’s world for young people to follow Jesus, share His teachings with others, and so find the fullness of life in joy, freedom and holiness. The video above shows how he affected the lives of others, especially his mother. The man speaking in the last part of the video is Rajesh Mohur, a Hindu from Mauritius who was employed by the Acutis family. Through the example of Carlo he became a Catholic, as did his mother later.
Both Pier Giorgio and Carlo had a profound understanding of the Mass and of Eucharistic adoration and of the place of our Blessed Mother in the mission of the Church. Both saw poor people as their brothers and sisters. Both had a sense of joy in their lives, the joy that comes only from Jesus: These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full (John 15:11).
There is a wealth of information about both of these saints on the internet, including many videos on YouTube. Though Pier Giorgio might be, Carlo would not at all be surprised by this since he grew up in the first 'internet generation' and saw the potential of this new medium to share the Gospel.
The Apostle Paul in Prison
Yet for love's sake I prefer to appeal to you—I, Paul, an old man and now a prisoner also for Christ Jesus . . . (Philemon 9; Second Reading).
These two new saints are seen by many as models for young people, as indeed they are. But they are saints for much older people like myself. When I first came across Pier Giorgio - I can't remember when - I was immediately drawn to and inspired by him. He died at the age I was ordained. In today's Second Reading, from St Paul's Letter to Philemon, his shortest, we read how a young man, Onesimus, meant so much to St Paul. Onesimus had been a bondservant of Philemon. St Paul writes: I appeal to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I became in my imprisonment. I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart.
St Paul then writes something that I think we Christians have yet to take fully on board about who we really are: For this perhaps is why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back for ever, no longer as a bondservant but more than a bondservant, as a beloved brother — especially to me, but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord. So if you consider me your partner, receive him as you would receive me.
St Pier Giorgio Frassati and St Carlo Acutis both took these words of St Paul fully on board.
Traditional Latin Mass
What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful (Benedict XVI).
Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 09-07-2025 if necessary).
Epistle: Galatians 3:16-22. Gospel: Luke 17:11-19.
Codex Aureus of Echternach
The bottom panel shows the healing of the ten lepers
'Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner? And he said to him, 'Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well' (Luke 17:18-19; Gospel).
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