What I have in common with Indiana Jones...and Stuff

I was 12 when The Fellowship of the Ring came out. It was the first PG-13 movie I ever saw, and that was only allowed because I'd read it 5 times.

PG-13 previews are still PG-13 though. Those were usually what got me. Twelve years later I still shut my eyes for some of them.

For example, somewhere about 13 or 14 years old they were showing a preview for something called "Anaconda: Hunt for the Blood Orchid." The title is sort of seared into my brain because the preview was kinda a traumatic experience: there was a snake in it. A really big one.

And I stopped breathing. 

I'm not actually sure at what point the non-breathing thing happened, but somewhere along the line of this massive serpent slithering in the depths of a river below a boat full of people ridiculously dwarfed by its size, I just froze, respiratory system and all, and didn't even realize it until the preview ended and it hit me that inhaling would be a really, really good idea.

As it turns out, I am afraid of snakes. Unreasonably, terribly, hugely, non-breathingly afraid of snakes. 

I am somewhat consoled by the fact that I share this weakness with Indiana Jones. WIN.

I'd been considering this lately because a while back someone referred to me as "fearless."

Uhhm...not so much.

It was a reasonable mistake. I'm sort of a little freak and a lot of what I guess would be considered "normal" fears I'm just too dumb to have, and the ones I DO have are mostly the result of pride and therefore rather more difficult to see.

For starters, let's talk about public speaking.

I don't really know much about Jerry Seinfeld, but I hear he does say some funny things. Like: 

"I read a thing that actually says that speaking in front of a crowd 

is considered the number one fear of the average person. 

I found that amazing – number two was death! That means to the average person 

if you have to be at a funeral, you would rather be in the casket than doing the eulogy.”

On the one hand, I just went to confession yesterday so at the moment I'm kinda chill with being in the casket, but as far as a fear of speaking in front of a crowd...

I. LOVE. Speaking to crowds.

Amazingly much, actually. Like adrenaline junkies love skydiving, I love speaking to crowds. I know, it's weird. Probably kind of dumb. But useful.

See, there are plenty of things about my job that, humanly speaking, probably should make me kind of nervous, but they don't. That's all God, and I'm grateful for it. 

But there are plenty of things which I'm as scared of as the next person, if not more.

I'm afraid of confronting people I like. If I like them I want them to think I am sweet and nice and likable too. If it's somebody I love on the receiving end who might be hurt, I'm afraid of reprimanding or "teachable moments" or hard truths. I'd rather take a hit or be lonely then confront a bad situation if it means estrangement from somebody I'd rather protect. I'm afraid of trusting people if others have let me down in the past. I'm afraid of hoping for things I'm afraid will never happen. I'm afraid of letting people down, of disappointing them. I've even been afraid of not being brave enough.

But, what if I weren't?

See, I'm not sure fearlessness is the answer to all of this. In fact, I'm pretty convinced it's not.

My proof? The four cardinal virtues: "Prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude."

Fortitude. 

Not fearlessness.

Not a lot of people really use that word any more, which is kind of a shame. It's a great word. Some of the definitions:

"Courage in face of pain or adversity."

"Strength of mind that enables a person to encounter danger 

or bear pain or adversity with courage."

"Mental and emotional strength in facing difficulty, adversity, 

danger, or temptation courageously."

So, basically, courage. And what is courage?

"The ability to confront fear, pain, danger, uncertainty, or intimidation."

"Mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty."

"The state or quality of mind or spirit that enables one to face danger, fear, 

or vicissitudes with self-possession, confidence, and resolution; bravery."

Ain't nothin' in there about fearlessness. In fact, that looks like a lot of fearful things. Pain, uncertainty, danger, difficulty, vicissitudes (Google it, awesome word). Fear.

But what if we weren't afraid?

Or better yet, what if we didn't have to be afraid? 

Here's my logic: fear is a result of sin. The Original Sin. So, in a way, it's kind of in our DNA now. It has become our natural, fallen state. Genesis 3:10 gives us Adam's first words to God after The Fall: 

"I heard You in the Garden, but I was afraid, because I was naked, so I hid myself."

After some introspection I recognize my own voice in those words.

"I saw You coming, but it looked intimidating, so I closed in on myself. I saw You pointing that way, but it looked scary, so I will just stay here. I heard You speaking, but what You asked sounded uncomfortable, so I will find a lot of noise to fill my ears instead and help me numb the longing to draw closer to You. Because I've messed up, big time - I know it and You know it, but I can't stand to see the disappointment in Your eyes. I can't stand to run the risk of failing You again...Because I am afraid, and I just don't want to move."

When I give Him half a chance, His still, small voice slips through, "But, what if you weren't?"

The Imitation of Christ contains a beautiful story:

"There was once a man who was very anxious, and wavered between fear and hope. One day, overcome with sadness, he lay prostrate in prayer before the altar in church, and pondering these matters in his mind, said, `Oh, if only I knew that I should always persevere!' then he heard within his heart an answer from God: `If you knew this, what would you do? Do now what you would then, and all will be well.' So, comforted and strengthened, he committed himself to the will of God, and his anxious uncertainty vanished. Nor did he wish any longer to inquire into what would happen to him, but strove the more earnestly to learn the perfect and acceptable will of God, whenever he began or undertook any good work."

What if you weren't afraid?

How would you serve? How would you stand out? How would you defend the innocent? How would you speak the Truth? How would you say His Name...if you weren't afraid?

Maybe trust is what happens when we recognize that we are afraid - and then leap towards God in spite of our fear.

Those quiet longings, those half-smothered wishes that stir up in our hearts when we dare to think what might happen if we weren't so very, very afraid...I believe that oftentimes, those are the desires that most closely mirror the ones He has for us.

So what would happen if we acted on our trust, instead of our fear? What if we did what would most delight the heart of the Father and really just trusted Him? What if we took the example of His saints seriously when they said things like, 

"The joy of the LORD is my strength."

"It is not the actual physical exertion that counts towards one's progress, 

nor the nature of the task, but by the spirit of faith with which it is undertaken." 

- Saint Francis Xavier

“One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. 

But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.” 

- St. Joan of Arc

"When you draw close to our Lord, remember that He is always very close to you, that He is in you: The Kingdom of God is within you. You will find Him in your heart...Put out into deep water! Throw aside the pessimism that makes a coward of you...And pay out your nets for a catch! We have to place our trust in our Lord's words: get into the boat, take the oars, hoist the sails and launch out into this sea of the world which Christ gives us as an inheritance - His kingdom will have no end. Doesn't it fill you with joy to work for such a kingdom?"

- St. Josemaria Escriva

"Be Not Afraid! Open up, no; swing wide the gates to Christ. Open up to his saving power the confines of the State, open up economic and political systems, the vast empires of culture, civilization and development... Be not afraid!"

- Blsd. John Paul II

But wait! There's more...

Okay, this is part dos, so if you didn't see the first part it's here.

Also, I stumbled across this interesting little bit of information about his name.

Now, to the great secret of Pier Giorgio Frassati: how in the world did such an incredibly normal, red-blooded young man end up beautified?

Two words: Heroic. Virtue.

See, my theory is this: if it's not a struggle, how can it be heroic? Pier Giorgio was normal in his interests, in his likes and dislikes, in his appearance. It was his approach to living that led to sanctity.

The testimonies from acquintances after his death described his unfailing good example, his unswerving readiness to defend the faith, his conviction that all things must be ordered to God, his dedication to bringing society and his country back to the morals God had written on the human heart.

He was high-spirited without being crude, exuberant without overindulging, in love with Catholicism without being hypocritical, passionate and patriotic without being excessively violent.

He might have been rambunctious, but the magnestism others found so irresistible in him came from the soul of a mystic, filled to the brim with the joy of knowing Christ and spilling over with the purest love imaginable. 

He was a proud card-carrying member of a nocturnal Adoration society, and was known to spend entire nights kneeling in profound adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.

The meager allowance his wealthy father gave him was passed on to the poor, and he made countless visits on behalf of the St. Vincent de Paul Society. He'd even give away his bus allowance to beggars, and end up running home. It's almost guaranteed that in at least most, if not all, of the pictures above he has somewhere on his person the pocket-size Epistles of St. Paul he was notorious for carrying and referencing with great affection.

He had special permission to be a daily communicant, which was rare in those days, His family didn't understand his devotion, and his parents almost didn't approve the original request from his spiritual director to allow a then-teenaged boy to receive the Eucharist daily. His mother was concerned it would make him overly-pious. Many of us take it for granted now, but it was more difficult then: remember, the fast began at midnight. If he couldn't get to Mass until the evening he simply wouldn't eat all day. But he never let himself miss. He would skip his beloved skiing trips if his friends' schedule called for a departure so early he couldn't make morning Mass.

And if you're still looking for somebody "normal," he even had a disappointed heart. He was very, very much in love with a young woman named Laura. His sister Luciana described it to her fiance in a letter: 

"Yesterday he came to me with his great black eyes and told me he loved a girl..."

But he never pursued her, because he discovered his mother disapproved of Laura's lower class in society. His parents' marriage was on shaky ground, and for the sake of preserving some of the peace his family still had, and for the sake of guarding the young woman's heart, Pier Giorgio never let Laura know he felt anything more than friendship for her. He wrote to a close friend: 

"I am reading the novel by Italo Mario Angeloni, Ho Amato Cosi, in which he writes in the first part about his love for an Andalusian woman, and, believe me, I feel a lot because it is like the story of my love. I too have loved like that, only in the novel it is the Andalusian girl who makes the sacrifice, whereas in my case I am the sacrificed, because that is what God wills."

But on June 30th, 1925, the athletic, passionate young man started feeling terribly ill. And five days later, on July 4th, he was dead, stricken by polio.

It has since been surmised that he contracted the disease while visiting his beloved poor for the St. Vincent de Paul society. His famous last action was to beg his sister Luciana to retrieve some vials of medicine and pawn tickets from his coat pocket. The pawn tickets he instructed her to redeem on behalf of some poor people who had been forced to sell their belongings, and for the vials of medicine he painfully scrawled directions with his half-paralyzed hand. They were for a poor man he had been assisting, and in agony on his own deathbed he was anxious that they be delivered, and the poor man not disappointed.

As the son of a famous political figure, it was expected that Turin's upper class would turn out for Pier Giorgio's funeral. But his family was shocked when over a thousand of Turin's poorest turned out as well.

The poor themselves had been surprised - they hadn't realized who their young friend was. Pier Giorgio always called himself Girolamo to them, the name he took when he became a Third Order Dominican a few years before his death.

It was the poor of Turin who petitioned the Archbishop to open a cause for his sanctification, and his family went along with it, stunned to discover this hidden side of the young man they thought they knew.

When Pope John Paul II presided over Pier Giorgio's beautification in 1990, he said the following:

"Faith and charity, the true driving forces of his existence, made him active and diligent…in his family and school, in the university and society; they transformed him into a joyful, enthusiastic apostle of Christ, a passionate follower of his message and charity. In his life, faith was fused with charity: firm in faith and active in charity, because without works, faith is dead. In him faith and daily events are harmoniously fused, so that adherence to the Gospel is translated into loving care for the poor and the needy in a continual crescendo until the very last days of the sickness which led to his death. 

He fulfilled his vocation as a lay Christian in many…political involvements in a society in ferment, a society which was indifferent and sometimes even hostile to the Church.

Receive the message which Pier Giorgio Frassati is sending to the men and women of our day, but especially to you young people, who want to make a concrete contribution to the spiritual renewal of our world, which sometimes seems to be falling apart and wasting away because of a lack of ideals…He repeats that it is really worth giving up everything to serve the Lord. He testifies that holiness is possible for everyone, and that only the revolution of charity can enkindle the hope of a better future in the hearts of people.

Is love not possibly what is most needed in our twentieth century, at its beginning, as well as at its end? Is it perhaps not true that the only thing that lasts, without ever losing its validity, is the fact that a person "has loved"?

He left this world rather young, but he made a mark upon our entire century, and not only on our century." 

"And you, what have you done?"

In which I Explain Myself (a little)

"To defend his purity, Saint Francis of Assisi rolled in the snow, 

Saint Benedict threw himself into a thornbush, 

Saint Bernard plunged into an icy pond.

And you . . . what have you done?"

- St. Josemaria Escriva

"And you...what have you done?"

The first time I read that quote from St. Josemaria, I felt as though it had knocked the wind out of me. 

I'm about to turn 24, and when I saw his words, it was too weird.

See, my Pier Giorgio was 24 when he died. And I'd been thinking about that.

"And you, what have you done?"

Of course, I think about my Pier Giorgio pretty regularly anyway, so the fact that our ages came up was not terribly extraordinary. This is not morbid. It's a milestone. He was "ready" when he was 24. He was doing everything he could to strive for holiness. In fact, Blessed John Paul II described him once as "wresting holiness from everyday life."

"And you, what are you doing?"

Well...ehhh...not exactly that. 

Sometimes, sure. I try, yeah. 

But, believe you me, there's more than plenty of work to do.

Now, before you get all irate on me: YES, I am aware that God gives different graces to every soul. YES, I am aware that my path to holiness will be unique. HOWEVER, the saints are part of God's plan to get us to Heaven, and I think a little healthy introspection is not misplaced. But introspection is not what I'm talking about this time. 

No, this post is for my Pier Giorgio.

 Many of you are already (very keenly) aware that he and I are pretty much best buds. That I constitute a one-girl fan club. That I talk at him, to him, and about him not infrequently. Some of you may even be sick to death of him. (If you're in the "sick of him" category, you're really lame, by the way.) One of my friends heard him mentioned and asked me, "Pier Giorgio, that's your guy, right?" (Day. MADE.) Another of my friends refers to him as my "saint crush." 

Well, he's not exactly a saint crush. Legit question though. I mean, hey:

I thought about trying to explain this and was reminded of a story I heard Fr. Larry Richards tell. When he gives retreats, he likes to ask retreatants how they "know" God exists. After shooting down their proofs for God's existence, he demands they ask him that same question: "Okay, Father - how do you KNOW God exists?"

"Because I KNOW HIM. Because I have sat in Adoration and experienced His presence. Because I have seen Him work in my life."

I love my Pier Giorgio because I know him.

He is so knowable. We have letters and pictures and stories from family and friends.

How could you resist loving holiness that looks like this?

And, uhm, why the heck would you even want to?

I just don't even know what's not to love. Even the annoying stuff. Yes, I do occasionally find him annoying, as all normal sisters at some point find their normal brothers at least a little annoying, no matter how handsome, charming, and lovable they are. His (for-real-genetic) sister, Luciana, was a little younger but very close to him in age and thought the world of him...most of the time. 

Okay, first of all: the man was a practical joker. ANNOYING. But I seem to fall in love with the saints who are known for that...Blessed Miguel Pro was a notorious prankster as well. Ugh.

Secondly, he smoked. Cheap cigars. It drove Luciana nuts. And a pipe, he liked pipes, too. In fact, funny story, this was the picture they used for his beautification Mass:

Except they airbrushed the pipe out, which I find completely hilarious. I heard that story and snickered. Because you can do that with Pier Giorgio. You can laugh that somebody thought it would be wise to airbrush this smoking, pranking, rowdy jock of a saint into a polished pose when, really, part of the magnificence of his sanctity is the fact that he was a smoking, pranking, rowdy jock...Who also loved to throw parties. This is him with the paper hat on.

But he's lovely, too. I mean, just really lovely. His letters to friends and family are so genuine, so tender. He loved people, and loved loving them. He was a leader among his friends, and they loved him. They loved him when he sang loud even though he couldn't actually sing. They loved him when he climbed out of broken-down trains to march up and down declaiming Dante's poetry while they waited for repair workers to arrive. They loved him when he would trade small favors and ask for his end that they go to Adoration with him, loved him when he'd reach a mountaintop after the climbs he relished and pray for the repose of the souls of every climber who had died on the slope.

How could you not love somebody that colorful?

He didn't like school and wasn't good at it. But he worked hard, very hard - doing his best to fulfill what he saw as his vocation: to study and work and do well at school. He chose for his profession to be a mining engineer. His reason (apart from the fact that he liked rocks, weird) was that miners were some of the worst-treated members of society. He felt that in becoming a mining engineer he would have a chance to get close to and work with "the least of these," and for Pier Giorgio that meant getting close to Jesus.

Because my Pier Giorgio wasn't just some jock. He might be labeled that today, except he was unswervingly kind and considerate. He had a great sense of solidarity with the underprivileged, with those who had been shoved aside. In one of the (many) political demonstrations he was involved in, he ended up arrested. He was offered special treatment as the son of the famous diplomat...and refused it, opting instead to spend the night in the crowded cell with his compatriots.

Personable and lovable...unless you were in the gang of Fascists who tried to break into his family home. In which case he would swing in like Robin Hood, fistfight the whole lot out of the house, and then chase them down the street shouting, "Blackguards! Cowards!"

Ohhh yeah. He did that, when he was about 20 years old. 

Oh, and he did this:

So, how did he, cigar-smoking, keg-dragging, Fascist-beating, boisterous man become a Blessed?

Hmm...more on that later. :)