Happy Birthday, Mother Mary! Welcome to the party, Saint Carlo and Saint Pier Giorgio, first saints of Pope Leo XIV!

​From the canonization homily of Pope Leo XIV:  "In the first reading, we heard a question: "Who has learned Your counsel, unless You have given wisdom and sent Your Holy Spirit from on high?” (Wis 9:17).  This question comes after two young Blesseds, Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis, were proclaimed saints, and this is providential . . . 

Jesus, too, in the Gospel, speaks to us of a plan to which we must commit wholeheartedly.  He says: “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple” (Lk 14:27); and again: “None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions” (v. 33).  He calls us to abandon ourselves without hesitation to the adventure that He offers us, with the intelligence and strength that comes from His Spirit, that we can receive to the extent that we empty ourselves of the things and ideas to which we are attached, in order to listen to His word.

Many young people, over the centuries, have had to face this crossroad in their lives.  Think of Saint Francis of Assisi, like Solomon, he too was young and rich, thirsty for glory and fame.  That is why he went to war, hoping to be knighted and adorned with honors.  But Jesus appeared to him along the way and asked him to reflect on what he was doing.  Coming to his senses, he asked God a simple question: “Lord, what do You want me to do?” From there, he changed his life and began to write a different story: the wonderful story of holiness that we all know, stripping himself of everything to follow the Lord, living in poverty and preferring the love of his brothers and sisters, especially the weakest and smallest, to his father’s gold, silver and precious fabrics.

How many similar saints we could recall!  Sometimes we portray them as great figures, forgetting that for them it all began when, while still young, they said “yes” to God and gave themselves to Him completely, keeping nothing for themselves.  Saint Augustine recounts that, in the “tortuous and tangled knot” of his life, a voice deep within him said: “I want you” (Confessions, II, 10,18). God gave him a new direction, a new path, a new reason, in which nothing of his life was lost.

In this setting, today we look to Saint Pier Giorgio Frassati and Saint Carlo Acutis: a young man from the early 20th century and a teenager from our own day, both in love with Jesus and ready to give everything for Him.

Pier Giorgio encountered the Lord through school and church groups — Catholic Action, the Conferences of Saint Vincent, the Italian Catholic University Federation, the Dominican Third Order — and he bore witness to God with his joy of living and of being a Christian in prayer, friendship and charity.  This was so evident that seeing him walking the streets of Turin with carts full of supplies for the poor, his friends renamed him “Frassati Impresa Trasporti” (Frassati Transport Company)! Even today, Pier Giorgio’s life is a beacon for lay spirituality.  For him, faith was not a private devotion, but it was driven by the power of the Gospel and his membership in ecclesial associations.  He was also generously committed to society, contributed to political life and devoted himself ardently to the service of the poor.

Carlo, for his part, encountered Jesus in his family, thanks to his parents, Andrea and Antonia — who are here today with his two siblings, Francesca and Michele — and then at school, and above all in the sacraments celebrated in the parish community.  He grew up naturally integrating prayer, sport, study and charity into his days as a child and young man.

Both Pier Giorgio and Carlo cultivated their love for God and for their brothers and sisters through simple acts, available to everyone: daily Mass, prayer, and especially Eucharistic Adoration.  Carlo used to say: “In front of the sun, you get a tan. In front of the Eucharist, you become a saint!”  And again: “Sadness is looking at yourself; happiness is looking at God.  Conversion is nothing more than shifting your gaze from below to above; a simple movement of the eyes is enough.”  Another essential practice for them was frequent Confession.  Carlo wrote: “The only thing we really have to fear is sin,” and he marveled because — in his own words — “People are so concerned with the beauty of their bodies and do not care about the beauty of their souls.” Finally, both had a great devotion to the saints and to the Virgin Mary, and they practiced charity generously.  Pier Giorgio said: “Around the poor and the sick, I see a light that we do not have."  He called charity “the foundation of our religion” and, like Carlo, he practiced it above all through small, concrete gestures, often hidden, living what Pope Francis called “a holiness found in our next-door neighbors.” 

Even when illness struck them and cut short their young lives, not even this stopped them nor prevented them from loving, offering themselves to God, blessing Him and praying to Him for themselves and for everyone.  One day Pier Giorgio said: “The day of my death will be the most beautiful day of my life."  On his last photo, which shows him climbing a mountain in the Val di Lanzo, with his face turned towards his goal, he wrote: “Upwards."  Moreover, Carlo, who was even younger than Pier Giorgio, loved to say that heaven has always been waiting for us, and that to love tomorrow is to give the best of our fruit today.

Dear friends, Saints Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis are an invitation to all of us, especially young people, not to squander our lives, but to direct them upwards and make them masterpieces. They encourage us with their words: “Not I, but God,” as Carlo used to say. And Pier Giorgio: “If you have God at the center of all your actions, then you will reach the end.”  This is the simple but winning formula of their holiness.  It is also the type of witness we are called to follow, in order to enjoy life to the full and meet the Lord in the feast of heaven."

*    *    *

St. Pier Giorgio and St. Carlo, pray for us, and pray with us as we begin our triple novena of love! We ask you to be near us, and help us see more clearly her whom you now see face to face, our Blessed Mother of Joyful Surprises, the birthday girl! She drew you to Jesus in your lives and in your holy passage to Heaven - ask her to bring Jesus very close to us too, and take care of all the intentions we present before her now: those remembered, and those we have forgotten, the intentions of those we love and of those who need our love. Pray with us brothers, in this octave of your glorification, and ask our Mama with us:

Blessed Mother of those whose names you can read in my heart, watch over them with every care. Make their way easy and their labors fruitful. Dry their tears if they weep; sanctify their joys; raise their courage if they weaken; restore their hope if they lose heart, their health if they be ill, truth if they err, and repentance if they fall. Amen.

*   *   *

Due to technical difficulties beyond our control (i.e. the Holy Spirit), this post didn't automatically fly to the inboxes of subscribers yesterday when it was first written. As always, God's will is quite a bit more brilliant than ours, and the delay brought to our attention that our triple novena (which started yesterday, but if you missed opening day, just hop in now, there's plenty of days left) began on the Vigil of Mary's Birthday!

This makes more sense of my invoking Our Lady of Joyful Surprises (I'll credit the Holy Spirit with that one too) even though the first of our three novenas ends on the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. Well, now's the time to cash in on that saying which always seemed so dubious to me (though no doubt it's true) that they're all the same Our Lady!

The truth, which I've mentioned here before, is that Marcel and I are not big fans of sorrow. He is constantly complaining (well, he was back in the day when he wrote his wonderful and highly recommended Conversations with Jesus, Mary, and St. Therese) of "degout" which turns out to be a French-Vietnamese version of disgust. Marcel found that while he loved Jesus like crazy and got to spend time with Him every day, he still suffered the typical ups and downs (suffering particularly from the downs) the rest of us experience . . . but Jesus, Mary, and Therese kept reminding him to love Jesus in joy. Whether he experienced sorrow and needed to cry, or happiness and needed to laugh, they encouraged him to be joyful in his love for Jesus.

So with us too, as with Marcel and St. Therese before him, let's ask Our Lady for the Joy that first dwelt incarnate in her womb. She is the cause of our joy and full of joyful surprises because she is the Mother of Jesus, source of all joy. 

Little Jesus, on this day of your beautiful Mother's own birth, please shower us with the gifts she holds in her Immaculate Heart in such abundance: Joy, confidence, hope, charity, love, peace, gentleness, sweetness, and the miracles that will bring all these beautiful sparkling facets of Our Lady to those for whom we pray!

Draw me; we will run!