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| Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati |
Homily:
22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle C
Friends, today’s
readings call us to think about and attend to the virtue of humility in our
lives. Why humility? Well, if there’s one thing that we can learn
from the first sin, it’s that we can overestimate our ability to comprehend a
given situation and its consequences, leading us to bite off more than we can
chew (pun intended) and end up in an embarrassing situation or, worse yet,
suffering some severe consequences for our actions, as our first parents did in
the Garden of Eden. “Pride goeth before
the fall”, the saying goes, and so our Scriptures today call us to humility.
In our reading
from the wisdom writings of Ben Sirach, we hear that humility, far from
limiting our influence with others and God’s favor of us, will actually
increase them. And if we think about it,
this makes sense. While we often think
that those who are proud and who think highly of themselves tend to win the
esteem of others, usually this is limited to those whose accomplishments are
exceptional; and so, the esteem that they hold is really about their
accomplishments more than it is about who they are as persons. In everyday living, however—that is, in and
among the people with whom we interact everyday—we recognize that it is the
unassuming person, the humble person, whom we admire most. This is the person who puts others before him
or herself, who doesn’t brag about accomplishments, but rather about the
accomplishments of others, and who is always open to being corrected, in spite
of the fact that he/she may be well-learned in a particular topic or skill.
And so, it
follows that this person is more favored by God. The one who doesn’t assume he/she knows best,
but rather submits to God and his judgments in all things, receives God’s
favor. Just look at the example of
Jesus: who, when he was approached by a man who called him “Good Teacher”,
turned and said, “Why do you call me good?
Only God is good...” Although he was
God incarnate in human flesh, he knew that, in his human nature, he must not
seek the praise of others, but point always to his Father in heaven. Thus, Saint Paul says, in his famous Canticle,
“...because of this, God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name above
every other name...” /// The humble person is esteemed by others and
finds favor with God.
Then, in the
Gospel, we read how Jesus used a dinner party to teach his disciples this lesson
about humility. While he watched the
guests jockey for positions of prominence, he probably noticed that a few of
them were positioning themselves higher in rank than they really were, trying
to make themselves look better. Jesus
knew what we all know and that is that when you try to exalt yourself, people
see right through it and you usually come off worse for it. But when you accept your place and always try
to put others before you, people see that, too, and will usually be generous
with you to offer a better place. If
not, you’re no worse for it, since you didn’t risk suffering the consequences
of embarrassment (or, possibly, something worse).
Jesus then turns
to the host of the dinner—and I love this part—and he instructs him in radical
humility. He says, “when you hold a
lunch or dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives
or your wealthy neighbors, in case they may invite you back and you have
repayment. Rather, when you hold a
banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed will you
be for their inability to repay you.”
Who of us, right, ever thinks this way?
We all love fellowship with our relatives, friends, and neighbors. Can it really be that Jesus is telling us
never to have them over for dinner?
Well, I think that, since we believe Sacred Scripture to be inspired by
the Holy Spirit, we need to take seriously the idea that Jesus may mean this
literally (and, of course, that the promise of being repaid at the resurrection
is also literally true). But if we look
at it simply as a dichotomy—that is, as either “this” or “that”—then I think we
might be thinking too narrowly.
Remember that one
of the things that we hold in tension as Christians is the “both/and”. For example, we believe that Jesus is both God
and Man. We believe that the kingdom of
God is both here now and still coming.
And so, when we look at this, while striving to take Jesus for his word,
we should look for the “both/and” in the situation. In other words, is there a way to live his teaching
in which we can enjoy the fellowship of close relatives, friends, and neighbors
without neglecting the poor, crippled, lame, and blind? I think that the answer is “yes”, and I’d
like to share an example with you to explain why.
Pier Giorgio Frassati
was a young man from Turin, Italy, who lived in the early 1900s. He was the son of an Italian ambassador; and
so, needless to say, he came from a prominent family who lived with all of the
trappings that a wealthy businessman and ambassador could provide for his
family. Nonetheless, from an early age,
Pier Giorgio displayed a great empathy and devotion to the poor. It was said that once, when he was around 5
years old, a poor mother and her child came to the Frassati home looking for
help. Pier Giorgio noticed that the
child didn’t have shoes, so he quickly ran and got a pair of his own shoes to
give to the child. This devotion to the
poor continued throughout his adolescence and young adulthood.
Pier Giorgio was
a handsome and athletic young man who had a joy-filled personality; and so, he
also had many friends and he loved to spend time with them. Throughout his young life, he sought to
balance his devotion to his family, his friends, and to the poor. The three he saw as equal and so gave himself
to them equally (although often imperfectly).
For example, he never left for a trip with his friends (usually a hiking
trip in the Italian Alps... he loved climbing!) without first making sure that
the poor he knew from the streets of Turin had what they needed. None but a few of his friends, however—and none
of his family—knew of his devoted ministry to the poor. And so, when he contracted and died from
polio in 1925—at just 24 years old—his family and most of his friends were
shocked to find throngs of Turin’s poor who came to his funeral to honor this
young man who had served them so lovingly.
Pier Giorgio
Frassati did not neglect his fellowship with his family, friends, and neighbors
during his life. Yet he nonetheless
found a way to invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind to the
banquets that he had prepared. And he
did so humbly: never bragging about all that he did, but rather always striving
to do what he could out of gratitude for all that he had received in his life. As Catholics, we now know him as Blessed Pier
Giorgio Frassati, who is just one approved miracle away from being canonized a
saint: which would indicate that he, indeed, has been repaid for serving all of
those who could not repay him.
My brothers and
sisters, there are countless other saints who lived the same way—and some folks
here in our own community, I’m sure. And
so, let’s look to Blessed Pier Giorgio and the others to be for us an
inspiration to seek how God is asking us to make this humility a deeper, lived
reality in our lives. The fact that all
of these examples reveal to us is that it is possible for us to live this way;
and, thus, that we cannot expect to receive the reward of the righteous if we
do not strive to live it. And so, let us
look today—yes, TODAY—for ways to live this humility more deeply so that we
might be more conformed to the model of righteous humility: Jesus Christ—whom
we worship in this Eucharist and encounter here at this altar.
Given
at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – September 1st, 2019
