(Lenten Reflection) Unusual Joy

As a Catholic in the Western world, I like my faith as I do my summer blockbusters: fast, loud, and explosive. My first true encounter with a Saint of the Church—in an undergraduate religion class— felt something like being at the movies (just without the eight dollar bucket of popcorn). St. Francis of Assisi—a person about whom I had once known nothing—captured my secular imagination like Mel Gibson’s William Wallace or Russel Crowe’s Maximus. Here was a man who gave up everything to serve not nobility, but God; here was a knight for Heaven’s cause, stripping himself of worldly splendor and past transgressions to kneel at the foot of the cross! Hollywood wishes it could write that script. I certainly did not understand at the time that I, in the recesses of my soul, desired to live like Francis. Nor would I have predicted that I, only a few years later, would be attempting to do just that.

But existence, like any good movie, consists of more than action sequences and high-drama. If I’ve learned one funny thing about religious life it’s that it can sometimes look uncannily like “regular life.” Yes, as a friar I strive every day for conversion—to pray, to deny myself, and to live a supernatural life according to the Gospel message—but there still comes a time at the end of the day when I have to take out the trash. With every visit to the Blessed Sacrament, there’s a Costco trip to be made or a toilet to be scrubbed. I assume that such mundane tasks did not spare even Padre Pio. For a Franciscan, life is not all “kissing lepers and talking to wolves.” This reality begs a necessary question. As Christians, what do we do when we’re not converting sinners, making disciples of all nations, or doing all those things that we read about in Butler’s Lives of the Saints? Is it reasonable that we be expected to bear witness to the Risen Christ when we work forty hour weeks and then deal with seemingly endless troubles in our off-time? How can we become holy when our own lives often seem so…normal?

Fortunately, our God never fails to inspire us. While all saints were certainly normal people like you and I, some feel just a little bit more “human” than others. Enter Pier Giorgio Frassati, the devout young Italian who turned our traditional view of sanctity on its head.

I was first introduced to Blessed Pier Giorgio when I was a novice friar. As I scanned a display shelf in a Catholic bookstore, one of my classmates held a relatively thin paperback up to my face. “You’ve got to read about this guy!” he said. “You’ll love him.” I looked at the book’s cover: teal with a black and white image of a man snow-shoeing across an unforgiving landscape. Below the books title, the subtext read “Daredevil Athlete, Roguish Prankster, Unrelenting Activist, Unexpected Mystic.”

I grabbed the book from my brother. “Woah, how have I not heard of him before?” I asked rhetorically. Without even reading a page, I knew I was about to enter into the world of a real wild-man: a Catholic Jeremiah Johnson, if you will. The book’s pages, however, painted the picture of a much different character—one who, in many ways, was much more heroic than his photograph suggested, yet at the same time, as familiar as a lifelong friend.  

Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati was the son of a wealthy, agnostic politician who ran a prominent liberal newspaper. Despite his father’s wishes that he, too, work in the publishing business, Pier Giorgio entered university studies with the intent of working with and evangelizing low-income miners. Throughout his short life, he fought for social justice as a member of Catholic Party, organized outdoor excursions with friends, and was committed to his vows as a Third Order Dominican. But above all else, Pier Giorgio was authentically, radically Catholic. His faith was the driving force behind his every action, whether feeding the hungry after school, being obedient to his parents, or climbing a mountain. His faith was the reason that, when he came to die, the poor no less than the great came to pay their respects by the thousands.

Blessed Pier Giorgio Holy Card

On one occasion, I found a prayer card of Blessed Pier Giorgio sitting atop a counter in our friary basement. When no one claimed it, I happily snatched it and placed it proudly upon my bedroom desk. I looked at the image—an extremely jovial Pier Giorgio among a group of friends—and thought about the faith that inspired that joy. What incredible faith, to live a normal life elated by the simple hope of God’s love! I mailed the card to a friend, hoping that the simple example of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati would inspire him as it did me. Briefly, I worried that since there were a few men depicted on the holy card, my friend might not know which one was Pier Giorgio. Then I looked again at the image, at that face radiant with supernatural life, and understood that he would be impossible to miss. Shouldn’t we, too, be impossible to miss?

In a world rife with relativism, atheism, and profound negativity, many often wonder why anyone would decide to follow Christ. After all, why allow superstition to limit pleasure and happiness? Why follow the “rules” of religion? Perhaps there is no better time than the Lenten season to follow in the footsteps of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati and bring the joy of Christ into the normalcy of life. How can we do this? All it takes is faith—a mindfulness of the Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ. Pier Giorgio once said, “You ask me whether I am in good spirits. How could I not be so? As long as Faith gives me strength I will always be joyful!"

Lent offers us an opportunity to renew this faith through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. In the weeks leading up to the Resurrection of our Lord, let us look to the example of Blessed Pier Giorgio and all the Saints. Let our prayer be for the constant presence of the Holy Spirit within us. Let our fasting be from negativity, from idleness, and from all that keeps us from loving as a Christian is called to love. And let our almsgiving be the profound mercy of God offered to all who need it, from our family members to strangers on the street. Let us show the world that we are truly joyful! And our joy is unusual, as it comes not from the pleasures of the world, but from the supernatural power of Christ. The power that transforms you will be the same power that transforms all whom you meet.

Remember, not every life is meant to be a summer blockbuster; but it should be a great film nonetheless. A blessed Lent to you all!

(Reflection) Food of Angels, Food for Men; All You Lowly, Come and Eat.

"Hey, One Eye." They call him so because he has one eye —one eye and a lid, creased with age and spattered with melanin, sunken over an empty socket.

            Darla's eyes, circled with bright blue liner, leak from the corners so I cannot be sure whether her soul or her ducts are broken or which would be sadder.

            Dawn holds her jaw in pain, leaving half of a warm pastry abandoned on her paper plate until she can get a job to get benefits to get to the dentist.

            I ask Greg to consider produce: "Imagine you can have anything you want, what would it be?" "Anything?" he asks, eyeing me in way that makes my skin crawl with an unseen colony of ants. "To eat." I say. "Within reason."

            When I get close, they smell like cigarettes and jelly donuts. When I get close, I can see the browned nubs of teeth lodged in gummy smiles. The guests at the Monroe Community Center are a motley crew, and to deny it would be a disservice —to romanticize poverty and to romanticize their lives in a way that they do not ask for them to be romanticized.

            These eyes, these teeth, these faces, these bodies – among many tobacco-scented others – take their place in the single file line shuffling toward the personal items pantry.

***

            Heads of long, conditioned hair and neatly kept beards; stockings and khakis peeking out from the hems of down-filled jackets; hands clasped and fingers interlaced; feet adorned with Sorrel snow boots on this below-freezing day moving forward, forward. They move toward a man dressed in a green robe, doling out thin discs of bread.

This gathering seems composed: perfectly pressed and put together. But they are a motley crew in their own right. Professors, students, staff, locals —all take their place in the single file line shuffling toward the body of Christ. 

***

            Two hours passed between my morning at the Monroe Community Center and mass at Notre Dame's Basilica —not enough time for the afterimage of the pantry line to fade from my retinas. The similarities, then, strike me: two lines, held taught by a shared humanity, filing toward a source of nourishment; two groups standing in naked necessity before that which can robe it.

Upon first glance, they appear so different —and smell so different, too. But they share a bond of poverty: one spiritual and one material. The two types are intimately linked, reminding me that all of us are intimately linked by our shared Father.

St. Francis acknowledges this truth with the words, "the truly pure of heart are those who despise the things of earth and seek the things of heaven" (Francis and Clare. The Complete Works). He knows that to lift our hearts to God, they cannot be laden with weights of the world. Saint Clare similarly said, "You know, I am sure, that the kingdom of heaven is promised and given by the Lord only to the poor: for he who loves temporal things loses the fruit of love" (The First Letter of St. Clare to St. Agnes of Prague). Love can be found in God alone — in a God who is love. Love for the temporal goods of the Earth, rather than for the eternal God within them, is a perversion of love’s intended state.

The link between material and spiritual poverty was not known only to saints of centuries past, but also to the holy of today. Dorothy Day prayed "for an increase in the love of poverty, which goes with love of our brothers and sisters" (On Poverty) because she felt that "we cannot even see our brothers in need without first stripping ourselves". This is the empathy of the incarnate Christ, who entered physically into our human suffering.

***

Three days later I find myself at the Catholic Worker. The room is filled with people gathered for mass. It is filled with workers, guests, children, visitors, the materially poor, the spiritually poor, the hungry, the tired, and the joyful. But in their act of gathering, the distinctions between them disappear. The bonds are reaffirmed. The margins are scuffed by those who tread over them together in procession toward God.

By Mary-Kate Burns
(Thank you for this beautiful reflection)