Verso l’Alto!
Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
For I was hungry and you gave me food,
I was thirsty and you gave me drink,
a stranger and you welcomed me,
naked and you clothed me,
ill and you cared for me,
in prison and you visited me.”
- Matthew 25: 34-36
In today’s Gospel, Jesus gives us the blueprint for how “the sheep will be separated from the goats” for entrance into his Father’s kingdom. The list is not unlike another that he gives for happiness elsewhere in the Gospels, the eight beatitudes. It seems whenever Jesus gives us lists for life they are more than just examples of what a Christian should do, they are imperatives that call out to each of us: “Feed…cloth…visit,” or from the beatitudes, “be poor in spirit…mourn…hunger and thirst for righteousness,” etc.
To my knowledge, in the history of beatifications/canonizations of the Catholic Church, only one pope has ever used explicitly one of Jesus’ lists to describe the person being honored. That person was Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati. At Pier Giorgio’s beatification Mass on May 20, 1990, Pope John Paul II described Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati as “the man of the beatitudes.”
While only 24, Pier Giorgio’s short life is a testament to a profound, personal response to Jesus’ call in today’s Gospel:
“I was hungry and you gave me food,
I was thirsty and you gave me drink,
a stranger and you welcomed me,
naked and you clothed me,
ill and you cared for me,”
Born in 1901 to a wealthy Italian family. Pier Giorgio was the son of the founder of the La Stampa newspaper, a leading newspaper in the country of Italy that exists still to this day. His father wealthy and his mother a socialite, Pier Giorgio’s family wasn’t the recipe most would think of for a profound witness to Christian charity. Like his father, Pier Giorgio was interested in politics and social action; however, the primary difference between Pier Giorgio and his father was that one was more interested in selling his newspapers; the other was more interested in loving Christ in the poor.
In his wallet, Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati always carried St. Paul’s “Hymn of Charity” in 1 Corinthians 13:
“Charity is patient, charity is kind. 
It is not jealous, is not pompous, it is not inflated,
it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests,
it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury,
it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth.
It bears all things,
believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Charity never fails…”
Young, handsome, popular, and athletic, Pier Giorgio’s Christian witness to charity was profound. Pier Giorgio was “one of the guys” amongst his friends, but was truly extraordinary in his holiness of life. So great was his charity in the streets of Turin that when Pier Giorgio died unexpectedly from polio at 24, contracted from the poor that he extensively helped, the streets were lined up with thousands of the poor, homeless, and marginalized that he so diligently helped. His parents were so astonished as they had invited all of their social elite friends and relatives to the funeral that his father greatly lamented ever trying to push his son to the ambitious goal of taking over the La Stampa newspaper in his stead.
Instead, his father spent the rest of his life slowly converting, thinking about the witness of his amazing son that acted in secret for the good of so many others.
The Gospel today (along with Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati’s life) challenges us to examine our motives and our audience. Do we go out to love the poor simply because we should, or is there something more in it for our ego? Do we “see [as Pier Giorgio once remarked] a special light around the sick, the poor, the less fortunate, a light we do not possess”? Do we realize that our audience is always, in the end, God and all of heaven? Can we live in such a way so as to lose ourselves as Pier Giorgio did?
Today, let us remember this athletic and avid mountain climber, Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati, who on the eve of his death, with a paralyzed hand from polio, scribbled a message to a friend, asking him to take the medicine needed for injections to be given to Converso, a poor sick man he had been visiting.
Let us, too, lose ourselves amongst the mountain peaks of Christian charity as Pier Giorgio once did, remembering that our Father will separate out all our actions one day as “sheeps from goats,” rewarding us for the good or evil we do in secret.
As a resolution today, maybe let us live out one act of Christian charity, associating ourselves with many young people who wear a bracelet in Bl. Pier Giorgio’s honor with his motto: “Verso l’Alto” across it, meaning “to the top” or “to the heights” (of holiness), losing ourselves in the mountain peaks of charity that made Pier Giorgio a “sheep” of his Father.
Author: Adam Hauser, English Department
Instead, his father spent the rest of his life slowly converting, thinking about the witness of his amazing son that acted in secret for the good of so many others.
The Gospel today (along with Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati’s life) challenges us to examine our motives and our audience. Do we go out to love the poor simply because we should, or is there something more in it for our ego? Do we “see [as Pier Giorgio once remarked] a special light around the sick, the poor, the less fortunate, a light we do not possess”? Do we realize that our audience is always, in the end, God and all of heaven? Can we live in such a way so as to lose ourselves as Pier Giorgio did?
Today, let us remember this athletic and avid mountain climber, Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati, who on the eve of his death, with a paralyzed hand from polio, scribbled a message to a friend, asking him to take the medicine needed for injections to be given to Converso, a poor sick man he had been visiting.
Let us, too, lose ourselves amongst the mountain peaks of Christian charity as Pier Giorgio once did, remembering that our Father will separate out all our actions one day as “sheeps from goats,” rewarding us for the good or evil we do in secret.
As a resolution today, maybe let us live out one act of Christian charity, associating ourselves with many young people who wear a bracelet in Bl. Pier Giorgio’s honor with his motto: “Verso l’Alto” across it, meaning “to the top” or “to the heights” (of holiness), losing ourselves in the mountain peaks of charity that made Pier Giorgio a “sheep” of his Father.
Author: Adam Hauser, English Department
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