Jason Conroy
In 2011, university student Kevin Baker fell two stories and severely fractured his skull. His brain damage was so extensive that the doctors gave him little chance. Even if he survived, he would never be the same again.
A few years ago, I saw Kevin give his testimony at the FOCUS student conference in the US. He stood there perfectly healthy and agile, both physically and mentally, with not a hint of his life-changing injuries – a miracle recovery.
Frassati
To explain what happened to Kevin, we need to go 100 years back in time, to Turin in Italy at the beginning of the last century. This was the time when all the old monarchies of Europe were falling or fallen. The ideals of the time were secular, liberal, and nationalistic.
Alfredo Frassati was a man of this new era: an atheist, and the owner of Italy’s first national newspaper La Stampa, the husband of artist Adelaide Ametis. Their marriage had turned sour and was fraught with constant strife. Into this family was born, April 6 1901, Pier Giorgio Michelangelo Frassati. He and his younger sister Luciana were mostly either neglected or harshly treated by their demanding parents, who were more interested in their fashionable professional lives than in their children.
His parents were shocked to see crowds flock to his funeral in Turin. They hadn’t known a thing about his hidden, holy life”
At school, Pier Giorgio found the Faith: because of this faith, Pier Giorgio’s short life burned so brightly that he continues to touch other’s lives to this day.
While Pier Giorgio was still a schoolboy, his outraged father demanded his Jesuit teachers to prevent him from reading the Bible so much. His mother was highly upset when she heard he wanted to go to daily Mass at school, and once, on finding him asleep with rosary beads in his hands, brought in a priest to tell the young man to stop praying so much!
Pier Giorgio persevered. He prayed in secret in his room. He seemed incapable of keeping his possessions for himself, and constantly gave his money and clothes to the poor; he joined many Catholic clubs and societies and became a member of the Third Order of St Dominic as an ordinary layman. He admired Dominic’s preaching, Aquinas’s philosophy, and Catherine of Siena’s closeness to Jesus. He climbed mountains, laughed loudly, failed exams, got into trouble, and often had to use his fists defending his friends from groups of communists or fascists. He was such a friend of the poor and the sick, and so often frequented their slums, that he caught polio, and died at only 24 years of age, July 4 1925. His parents were shocked to see crowds flock to his funeral in Turin. They hadn’t known a thing about his hidden, holy life.
Pier Giorgio was beatified in 1990 by John Paul II. The Polish Pope, who loved to ski in the mountains as much as Pier Giorgio had, said, “In my youth I felt the beneficial influence of his example and as a student I was impressed by the force of his Christian testimony.”
Baker
In 2011, while Kevin Baker lay unresponsive in hospital, some family members began to say a novena to Pier Giorgio for Kevin’s recovery. A photo of Pier Giorgio was placed by Kevin’s bed. The next day, after nine days in a coma, Kevin opened his eyes. What he reported afterwards is remarkable. During his coma, he dreamt he was in his apartment and was visited by an unfamiliar young man who called himself ‘George’. The two boys tidied the apartment, played FIFA, and killed time until Kevin woke up – in the hospital. But Kevin, who had known nothing of him beforehand, recognised the picture of Pier Giorgio as the young man ‘George’ he had seen during his coma.
Thanks to this astonishing miracle, Pier Giorgio Frassati will be canonised at the Jubilee for Youth this summer in Rome. His motto was ‘Verso l’alto!’ – ‘To the heights!’ This should be our motto too. Pier Giorgio always strove for the heights, both on mountainsides and in the love of God, even when his family and society thought that he was wasting his life – he gave his all and held nothing back. Neither should we.
Jason Conroy is a philosophy student from Co. Kildare, currently studying at KU Leuven, Belgium.