Born into a prestigious and aristocratic family, Pier Giorgio might easily have become the type of person you would expect to trample on bruised reeds. Handsome, athletic, popular, a practical joker, and a hardworking engineering student—this young man had it all. Yet he was also touched by the needs around him, so he set privilege aside and committed himself to working for the marginalized.
Pier Giorgio had a special love for the poor and sick. He sought them out in the slums to bring them food, medicine, clothing, and money. “Jesus comes to me every morning in Holy Communion,” he would say, “and I repay him in my very small way by visiting the poor.” He was always looking to put money aside for his charities—choosing to walk instead of taking the bus, to ride the train in third class rather than first. He brought friends to church and told them, “Approach the Communion table as often as you can. Feed on this bread of angels. There you’ll draw the energy you need to fight inner battles.” Pier Giorgio was just twenty-four when he died suddenly of polio—which doctors suspected he caught while visiting the sick.
Pope John Paul II called Pier Giorgio a “man of the Beatitudes” when he beatified him in 1990. “The power of the Spirit of Truth, united to Christ, made Pier Giorgio Frassati a modern witness to the hope which springs from the gospel and to the grace of salvation which works in human hearts. . . . By his example he proclaims that a life lived in Christ’s Spirit—the Spirit of the Beatitudes—is ‘blessed,’ and that only the person who becomes a ‘man or woman of the Beatitudes’ can succeed in communicating love and peace to others.”
“Lord, raise up many men and women of the Beatitudes! Help us to love everyone with your justice—one that is tempered with mercy and compassion.”
Beatitude Bump!