I recently received an e-mail from my young blogging friend Sarah Therese of "Footprints on My Heart." Her college chaplain (I told you she was young!) recently commented that "Saints have Saints who are friends," and that inspired her to invite her blogging friends to share their stories about their devotion to their favorite saints on her blog. When I received that e-mail, I was very excited to participate. If there's one subject I never get tired of, it's the saints and what they can teach us.
So here's that post, which I was honored to share over at my friend's lovely blog.
My Special Friend,
Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati
It's funny how sometimes you feel an instant connection with one of the
saints. There are obviously no wrong choices among them when it
comes to "favorites," or to those of God's elect
for whom we feel some sort of special kinship and affection.
The saints all have different strengths--because they were just
people first, ordinary human beings who through extraordinary
grace and perseverance achieved great heights--and thus they can help
us in different ways. Of course, we should love them all. But
because we're human, we can't help but have our favorites among them.
Recently, my husband and I were visiting with one of
our sisters-in-law, and she was talking about her great devotion to St.
Joseph, to whom she has prayed unceasingly for her family's various special
intentions. (
Me, too, I thought; I love St. Joseph! I
don't think I've ever boarded an airplane without having a St.
Joseph prayer card in my purse and taking it out to say the Unfailing
Petition to this powerful patron of families during take-off.) Then we
took a little shopping trip to TJ Maxx, and in the jewelry case there were some
beautiful holy medals depicting St. Michael. My sister-in-law commented
that she was looking for a St. Michael medal to give to one of her daughters,
who just loves the warrior saint. (
Me, too, I thought; I love
St. Michael! My husband and I always say a prayer to him at the
conclusion of our daily Rosaries, knowing how powerful he is in fighting the
forces of sin and evil in this fallen world of ours.) Indeed, for every
individual and for every individual need, there is a saint.
I have my favorites among them, like everyone. One special saint
friend is St. Therese of Lisieux, whose story spoke to me, touched me, and
inspired me. When I read her autobiography
The Story of a
Soul many years ago, I felt an instant connection, and she has long been
one of my go-to saints when I feel the need for some serious Heavenly
aid. St. Catherine Laboure is another special friend of mine among
the saints, because I always wear a Miraculous Medal. St. Catherine
Laboure is the one to whom Mary appeared and gave the design for this
medal, and thus she is the one who is responsible for the spread of its
devotion. These two saints ended up sending me an amazing sign
of their support at a really crucial time in my life--but that is
a story for my
next "Footprints on My Heart"
post. Because today, I want to talk about a saint who is not nearly as
well-known, a rather obscure young man whose life story jumped out at me
from the pages of a rather obscure book and took up residence in my soul.
One day about 12 or 13 years ago, I was flipping through Ann
Ball's
Faces of Holiness,
Modern Saints in Photos and Words (one
of the many Catholic works that crowd our shelves), stopping to read the
sections that interested me. This book is filled with
short chapters that tell about the lives of different Saints,
Blesseds, and Venerables--as well as some people who lived lives of
extreme holiness, but whose causes for canonization have not yet begun. I
love to read about modern individuals--average Joes, lay people, married
women--who have found the path to sainthood. It gives me such hope.
It was by reading
Faces of Holiness that I first became
acquainted with Gianna Molla, who at the time was a Blessed but is now
a canonized Saint. Her story definitely resonated with me. But
I think the whole reason I was drawn to that particular book in the first
place was so that I would find Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, whose name was
completely foreign to me at the time. I read pages 213-219 (a short
synopsis of his heroic life and untimely death), and I was blown away by this
handsome young man from Turin, Italy, who died in 1925 but whose body
remains incorrupt. He was for all intents and purposes a
"normal" guy: good-looking, fun-loving,
athletic; a practical joker who was always surrounded by
friends; a student who struggled academically and was a bit of a disappointment
to his parents. He was extremely devout, however, a trait not shared by
the rest of his family members, and he was especially devoted to Our Blessed
Mother. He also had a secret life: born into wealth, he gave
almost all he had away to the poor (and his family did not even know the extent
of his charity until after his death--when it was revealed that unbeknownst to
them, there'd been a saint living among them). I'm not even sure why the
combination of photos and words in that book hit me the way they did, but I
felt as if I
knew him, as strange as that sounds--and I wanted to
know more.
Before long I had ordered and read
My Brother Pier Giorgio,
His Last Days, a memoir written by his sister Luciana that
chronicles his last week on earth--his "passion" and tragic death at
24. It remains one of the most
re-read tomes in
my personal library, and if you're interested in reading a review
I wrote for this wonderful book,
click here.
After that, I got my hands on Luciana's other book, a biography titled
A
Man of the Beatitudes (which I had my youngest son read in 8th grade when
we were homeschooling him; because--like JP II, who named him the Patron
of World Youth Day in 2000--I can't think of a better role model for a young
man to emulate). It, too, is well-worth the time. If you haven't
heard of this extraordinary young man, or if you haven't read much about him, I
highly recommend these two books. His life story is utterly
fascinating and inspiring, and if you do get to know Pier Giorgio
better, I believe there's a very good chance that he will become a
special friend of yours among the saints.
I admire this young man so much that I had to include him in
my novel
Finding Grace. My shy little
heroine, Grace Kelly, who is determined to achieve the goal of sainthood while
living in the world, is "introduced" to Pier Giorgio (I won't tell
you how--you'll have to read the book to find out!), and she becomes enchanted
with him to the point of having a bit of a crush, even though he's been long
dead. I had to figure out a way to work some Italian immigrant characters
into the novel so that there could be a personal connection between them and
this saintly Italian boy, because the story is set in the 1970's
and my research efforts failed to turn up the titles of any books that Grace
could have read at that time to learn about him. It took some finagling
to figure out a way to have her "meet" him, but it was worth it to
me. I was determined that Pier Giorgio Frassati would be
one the many saints whose life is an inspiration to Grace as she struggles
to find and stay on the path to sainthood.
I can imagine that I, too, might have felt
like Grace about him--if at 15 I hadn't yet met the true man of my
dreams: the boy who would become my husband, the boy who made crushes on
other males forever a thing of the past for me (and the boy who was my
main inspiration for the character of Grace's love interest, Tom
Buckley). And I think if more young girls would ignore the Justin Beebers
of the world and swoon instead over men like Pier Giorgio Frassati--men of
exemplary character, moral fortitude, and deep faith--there would be
a lot fewer heartaches.
I have yet to receive any special sign from this special
friend of mine, and yet I feel a deep bond. I urge you to learn
more about this holy young man who will one day be numbered among the
saints. (
This
link is a good start, if you'd like to read about him.)
This photo of Pier Giorgio scaling a high mountain is representative of his earthly life, which was a constant striving to reach the goal, the summit: eternal life in Heaven. The caption he wrote on it is quite apropos--"Verso l'alto" (Toward the top). With the help of saints like him and so many others, may we also reach the summit.
(This guest post appeared over at "Footprints on My Heart" today--thanks, Sarah Therese, for letting me share it with your readers!)
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