July 4--Bl. Pier Giorgio Frasatti, Third Order Dominican

 

Pier Giorgio Frassati, in the mountains from the book A Life in Pictures by Luciana Frassati.

An ordinary man is going to be canonized! He wasn’t a cleric. He did no miracles in his lifetime. He wasn’t a visionary or a mystic. He went to school to become an engineer. He helped the poor. He was a mountain climber. He protested against injustice. He opposed Italian fascism. He is Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati. St. John Paul II said he was a “man of the Beatitudes,” “a young man filled with a joy that swept everything along with it, a joy that also overcame many difficulties in his life”. Pope Francis said: “Pier Giorgio said that he wanted to return the love of Jesus that he received in Holy Communion by visiting and helping the poor.”

Frassati (1901-1925) was the son of an agnostic newspaper publisher and an artist. He became a member of the Catholic Federation of University Students and Catholic Action in Italy as a college student and also a member of the Third Order Dominicans. “He often said: ‘Charity is not enough; we need social reform’. He helped establish a newspaper entitled Momento whose principles were based on Pope Leo XIII's Rerum novarum.” He died of polio in 1925. “His parents expected Turin's elite and political figures to come to offer their condolences and attend the funeral and expected to find many of his friends there as well. All were surprised to find the streets lined with thousands of mourners as the cortege passed out of the reverence felt for him among the people he had helped.”

Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati was an ordinary man with an extraordinary dedication to God, love, and holiness. This is the purpose of canonization, to show that God’s love can be exemplified in our normal, everyday lives by loving others extraordinarily. Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati, pray for us!

March 8--St. John of God, Religious

 

St. John of God saving the Sick from a Fire at the Royal Hospital in 1549 by Manuel Gómez-Moreno González licensed under Public Domain.

Hospitals are a true legacy of the Catholic Church. The Council of Nicea in AD 325 decreed that every cathedral city should have a hospital to care for sick travelers. The importance of caring for the sick goes back to Jesus and the corporal works of mercy, when he said of those he identified with: “I was … ill and you cared for me” (Mt. 25:36). So it is not unusual for us to find saints who either founded hospitals or religious orders to care for the sick. That is the case with today’s saint, St. John of God.

Born in Portugal in 1495, João Duarte Cidade, John of God, lived the life of a soldier. After 40 years, he sought meaning and, after hearing a sermon by St. John of Avila, realized his sinfulness and publicly beat himself begging for mercy and repentance. He was committed to a mental hospital where St. John visited him and advised him to serve others rather than inflict punishment on himself. This persuaded John of God and he started attending to the sick poor, begging for funds for medical supplies and attending to patients in the hospital. He gathered others around him and founded the Order of Hospitallers. He died in 1550 from pneumonia after saving a man from drowning in Granada, Spain. He was declared patron of the dying and of hospitals by Pope Leo XIII. The Order of Hospitallers of St. John of God administers over 300 hospitals, services, and centers in 53 countries.

Catholic hospitals serve God by healing as Jesus did. Today, the Catholic Church is the largest non-governmental provider of health care in the world, with over 600 hospitals and 1,400 long-term care facilities in the United States alone! St. John of God, pray for us.

Second Friday after Trinity Sunday—Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

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The heart is a common symbol of love in our day, used in song and poetry, as well as everyday speech. So, it should be no surprise that the Church has a feast day dedicated to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, the one who loves us beyond love. The most significant promoter of the devotion to the Sacred Heart was St. Margraret Mary Alacoque of France in the 17th century. She received apparitions of the Sacred Heart and promoted its devotion. 

The first papal approval came from Pope Innocent VI in 1353 when he instituted a Mass in honor of the Sacred Heart. Pope Pius IX authorized the feast for the whole Church in 1856. Pope Leo XIII decreed a consecration of the world to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in 1899 as well as First Friday Devotions. Pope Pius XII wrote a letter instructing the Church on the devotion to the Sacred Heart in 1956 and Pope Benedict XVI reaffirmed the importance of this devotion in 2006. 

Pope Benedict wrote, “When we practice this devotion, not only do we recognize God's love with gratitude but we continue to open ourselves to this love so that our lives are ever more closely patterned upon it. God, who poured out his love ‘into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us’ (cf. Rom 5: 5), invites us tirelessly to accept his love. The main aim of the invitation to give ourselves entirely to the saving love of Christ and to consecrate ourselves to it is, consequently, to bring about our relationship with God. This explains why the devotion, which is totally oriented to the love of God who sacrificed himself for us, has an irreplaceable importance for our faith and for our life in love.”

*https://live.staticflickr.com/2327/2317894926_8585f50d6b_c.jpg

November 13--St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, Religious

Today's saint was the first American citizen to be canonized. She was born in Italy in 1850 and died in Chicago in 1917. In 1880 she and six other women founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. They came to America in 1889 at the urging of Pope Leo XIII, who wanted her to serve the Italian immigrants. During her 38 years in America she lived a life of dedication to those poor immigrants from Italy who had found their way to America only to lose their faith. She bolstered their faith and founded 67 institutions "dedicated to caring for the poor, the abandoned, the uneducated and the sick." She is the patron saint of immigrants.

We all came from somewhere. Our families originated in Europe, Africa, Asia, or the Americas. Our ancestors braved tragedies, wars, famine, drought, flood, economic hardships, and more so that they could raise their families in a new land with new opportunities for a better life. A better life also needs to be a holy life. But being immigrants means being aliens in a foreign land. Our ancestors needed help. Men and women like St. Frances Xavier Cabrini came to America as missionaries, serving all the poor they encountered, living the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. In turn, we who have benefited from their sacrifice need to feed the hungry, heal the ill, teach the ignorant, shelter the homeless, warn the sinner, protect the vulnerable for all those who are still looking to America as a beacon for hope and opportunity. America is still a land of immigrants. We still need to be like Mother Cabrini.