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In the Heart of the Church |
"Ready
to Think, to Feel, to Love, to Be Generous"
Homily on Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati
Bishop Anthony Fisher
Sydney, Australia, St. Benedict's Church
July 4, 2008
The following homily was given on the feast of Blessed Pier
Giorgio Frassati in the presence of his relics. Cardinal George
Pell, the archbishop of Sydney, presided at the Mass. The incorrupt
body of the blessed, a patron of World Youth Day, was moved from
Turin to Sydney for the youth event; this is the first it has been
moved since his death in 1925.
Male and female, fat and thin, young and old, clerical and lay,
alive or dead at the moment. There are many different kinds
Dominicans, of university students, of Vincentians, of Italians,
many different kinds of Christians, many different kinds of saints.
Each tries to work out with God a path of salvation. Some seem to
make more progress than others.
Pier Giorgio was one who in a short time made extraordinary progress
in faith, in hope, and in charity. I am delighted, after visiting
his family, his home, his tomb, the students and parishioners who
treasure his memory, and the chapel where he took as his patron the
fiery Dominican reformer Girolamo Savonarola, to now welcome my
brother to Sydney. During this World Youth Day period we rely on his
heavenly patronage and on the earthly presence of his relics to
mediate divine graces we need; but we also hope to make better-known
the story of that “Young man driven by his love of God, life and the
poor” (Catholic Weekly 30 June 2008).
The Catholic Church, as Chesterton once observed, is the most
democratic of organisations, because it has extended its franchise
far beyond national borders to all the world -- to men and women,
rich and poor; to people of all ages, from infant baptism until the
last rites of old age; to people of all cultures and communities,
all of whom have their sway. Even more democratic than this: she
also gives the dead the vote, she treasures her saints and her
traditions and allows ages past to have their say as well. Modern,
supposedly-liberal societies restrict the franchise to movers and
shakers in the here and now. But as we say at the climax of our
Creed: “We believe in the Holy Catholic Church” and that means the
Body of Christ stretching throughout the world and through time,
proclaiming his Gospel through many channels, including our beloved
young people, including Pier Giorgio.
Still, it is a quirky, Catholic thing this, this cult of saints long
dead. One radio host asked me recently “What’s this thing with
Catholics and bones?” One reason is that the relics of saints are
sacramentals: sites where God imparts graces of healing, conversion,
strength, though the intercession of some faithful soul who is now
with Him forever. This was obvious to our ancient and medieval
ancestors, who were so much more sophisticated than us when it comes
to death. Yet even we primitives honour our war dead, year by year,
with various ceremonies, and retell their stories, as if somehow to
conjure up their persons and their courage. Even post-moderns have
funerals, graves and monuments; they leave flowers and keep ashes --
not just to honour a memory but in the hope, in some mysterious way,
to remain in communion with those who have died. We might have
dumbed things down quite a lot in our relations with the dead, yet
still we crave for that next phrase of the Creed: “the communion of
the saints”.
There is another reason for venerating relics. Especially today
perhaps, when so many people think the real me is some ghost or
mind-stuff or inner self and that we can do what we please with the
body and be unaffected ‘inside’, we need to retrieve a proper sense
of the place of the body. Especially today perhaps, after a century
when more and more terrible things have been done to human bodies,
by way of torture, genocide, abortion, drugs and self-destruction,
and through pornography, prostitution and medical mutilation, we
need to be recalled to reverence the body. Against any dualism or
disrespect for the body, “this Catholic thing with bones” proclaims
the importance of the flesh, and of the unity of body and soul, in
every human life now and in the world to come. By honouring relics
we honour the person who was and look forward in hope to the person
who, after being purified of sin, will be restored and glorified.
When Pier Giorgio’s mortal remains were transferred from the Pollone
cemetery to the Turin Cathedral they were found incorrupt after
sixty years. Reverence for relics, then, is not just a quirky
Catholic thing: it is a quirky God thing. “We believe in the Holy
Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.”
“Amen,” says Pier Giorgio Frassati from his grave here tonight. When
Pope John Paul II beatified him in 1990, he called him “the man of
our century, the modern man, the man who loved much, the man of the
beatitudes.” The photographs around our church show a handsome,
robust youth with piercing eyes and an infectious smile. Full of fun
and energy, full of God and a passion for sharing God with others:
on the face of it, his death at the age of 24 was a tragic waste.
Yet here we are, at the other side of the world, celebrating him
because of what he still says to us. So far he has lived for 107
years and counting!
I first encountered him on posters in university chaplaincies around
Australia. Young men were attracted to the way he made an apostolate
even of horse-riding and mountain climbing, party-going and playing
pool. Young women seemed to be attracted by his dreamy good looks
and romantic character. Young Catholics of all sorts liked the
thought that you could be a saint while still a young adult, and
that you could unite a passion for God and serving others, with an
ordinary young person’s desire for fun. I knew I must get to know
him better.
He was born into an important Turin family. His father was an
agnostic, the founder-publisher of the liberal newspaper, La Stampa,
a senator and later ambassador to Germany. His mother, more
sensitive and artistic by nature, saw to the boy’s religious
upbringing but was not inclined to his level of devotion or charity.
It hurt that his parents did not understand his piety and were
struggling in their marriage. Like many young people today, he had
to find within himself those gifts of the Holy Spirit that would
bring his faith to maturity.
“To live without faith, without a patrimony to defend, without a
steady struggle for truth -- that is not living, but existing,” he
said. As a child he gave his shoes to a beggar. As a university
student he devoted his time before and after classes to working in
the slums. As a young man he gave his overcoat to a vagrant when the
temperature was minus 12 degrees Celsius [10 degrees Fahrenheit] and
when his father scolded him he replied automatically: “But Papa, it
was cold.” Cold, of course, for the pauper; cold for Christ in that
pauper. He gave away his bus fares and even his graduation money to
the poor. When asked by friends why he rode third class on the
trains he replied with a smile, “Because there is no fourth class.”
It is good to do such things oneself, but even better to do them
with others, with “a communion of saints” or saints-in-the-making,
and so Pier Giorgio was a great joiner of groups. He loved
companionship in a common cause. To promote Catholic social teaching
he joined the Catholic Student Federation, the Popular Party and the
student newspaper. To serve the poor he joined the St Vincent de
Paul Society. To deepen his spirituality he joined the Dominican
Laity (‘tertiaries’). Even his practical jokes, sports and social
life drew others to God. When Father Gillet -- eventually Master of
the Dominican Order -- met him at University, he recorded that the
young man deeply impressed him “with his particular charm. He seemed
to radiate a force of attraction … everything in him shone with joy,
because it grew from his beautiful nature to bloom in the sunshine
of God.”
Fr Gillet thought Pier Giorgio rare amongst university students in
his “longing for the supernatural and true temperament of an
apostle… [ready] to think, to feel, to love, to be generous, with
all the impetus and resources of nature and grace.” Perhaps after
World Youth Day this will not be so rare amongst our university
students. Students were certainly Pier Giorgio’s special love after
his family and the poor. Yet shortly before his graduation he
contracted polio from one of the sick to whom he ministered. After
six days of intense suffering he died on this day, 4 July, 1925.
The church was full of the worthies of the city for his funeral, as
you would expect for one from such a prominent family, as well as
his student friends and disciples. But to their astonishment, when
they came out of the church, the streets were lined not by the élite,
but by the poor and needy whom he had served throughout his short
life. The crowd of the poor were equally surprised to find out that
their beloved “Fra Girolamo” was from a rich family. It was they who
petitioned the Archbishop of Turin to begin the process for his
canonization.
Now he speaks to a new generation. Now he graces our World Youth Day
with his patronage and witness. Pier Giorgio Frassati, witness to
justice and charity, “man of the beatitudes,” draw us more deeply
into the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the
forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life
everlasting. Amen!
See Chaplet in Honor of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati...
This page is the work of the Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and
Mary
