He speaks surprisingly before mass to “greet many young boys who came for this mass. A blessing of the Lord find us together who came from different countries. A gift of faith that we want to share»Says Pope Leone. It appears on the churchyard to thank all those who arrived for the canonization of Pier Giorgio and Carlo and, in particular the family of Acutis and all the Catholic action. In the Italian delegation the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella and Lorenzo Fontana. On the notes of “upwards”, the phrase that the Piedmontese saint had written on one of his latest photos that portrayed him as he scaled the peaks stretched towards God, the square fills with over one hundred thousand people. They wave the flags of the AC, those of the oratory of Pollone, the country where Pier Giorgio passed his summers, those of the fourteen year old who died of fulminating leukemia.
Leone recalls that “Pier Giorgio and Carlo lived this love for Jesus Christ, especially in the Eucharist, but also in the poor, in the brothers and sisters. All of you, all of us “, urges,” we are called to be saints “.
Pier Giorgio Frassati is “a model of holiness for these times so full of violence and division”, the president of the Catholic action Giuseppe Notarstefano had said in the conference in preparation for canonization. AND Leone, after reiterating that “today is a beautiful party for all of Italy, for the whole Church and for the whole world”, He prepares for his first canonization ritual. Recalls King Solomon that “he had realized” that “the greatest risk of life is to waste it outside the project of God”. Remember St. Francis who, after starting for the war to cover himself of honors, returned in himself, had asked God a simple question: “Lord, what do you want me to do?”. And “Returning to his steps, he had begun to write a different story: the wonderful story of holiness that we all know, stripping of everything to follow the Lord, living in poverty and preferring to gold, silver and the precious fabrics of his father the love for the brothers, especially the weakest and youngest”.
Sometimes, he underlines, we depict the saints “like great characters, forgetting that for them everything began when, still young, they replied” yes “to God and they gave themselves fully, without keeping anything for himself”. And look to “San Pier Giorgio Frassati and San Carlo Acutis: a young man from the beginning of the twentieth century and a teenager of our day, both lovers of Jesus and ready to give everything for him”.
Remember that “Pier Giorgio met the Lord through school and ecclesial groups – the Catholic action, the conferences of San Vincenzo, the rifle, the Dominican third order – and testified it with his joy of living and being Christian in prayer, friendship, charity. To the point that, by virtue to see him go around the streets of Turin with cart full of aid for the poor, his friends had renamed him “Frassati Impresa Transport”!». His life represents a light of secular spirituality. Because he did not experience faith as “a private devotion: driven by the strength of the Gospel and by the belonging to ecclesial associations, he generously engaged in society, he made his contribution to political life, he spent ardor at the service of the poor”. CarloInstead, he met Jesus in the family and school. “Thus grew up, naturally integrating in his days of child and boy prayer, sport, study and charity”. Both, then, “cultivated the love for God and for the brothers through simple means, within everyone’s reach: the daily Mass, the prayer, especially the Eucharistic adoration”.
Confession was also essential for them. “Carlo wrote:” The only thing we have to really fear is sin “; And he was surprised because – they are always his words – “men care so much about the beauty of their body and do not worry about the beauty of their soul”. Finally, both had a great devotion to the saints and for the Virgin Mary, and generously practiced charity. 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 “the holiness” next door “”. And finally, “even when the disease hit them and struck their young lives, not even this has stopped them and prevented them from loving, of offering God, to bless him and to pray him for himself and for everyone.” “One day Pier Giorgio said:” The day of death will be the most beautiful day of my life “; and on the last photo, which portrays him while a mountain of the Val di Lanzo, with the face turned to the goal, had written:” Upper “”.
And therefore «The saints Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis are an invitation to all of us, especially to young people, not to spoil life, but to orient it upwards and to make a masterpiece. They encourage us with their words: “Not me, but God”, said Carlo. And Pier Giorgio: “If you have God for the center of all your action, then you will get to the end”. This is the simple but winning formula of their holiness. And it is also the testimony that we are called to follow, to taste life to the end and meet the Lord on the feast of heaven ».
