Today is July 17, Thursday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time.
We read at today’s Mass, “Jesus said: ‘Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest'” (Mt 11:28).
When we hear these words from Jesus, many of us imagine laying our burdens at his feet, giving him our worries and our fatigue. But Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati heard these words and responded in a slightly different way by stepping out in love for others.
Even while he was gravely ill, Pier Giorgio worried more about the poor he served than about himself. Through the St. Vincent de Paul Society, he regularly visited families in need, not just to meet their material needs, but also to bring them the love of Christ.
Sharing in Christ’s mission
One of his friends, the Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner, once wrote that although many young Christians of Pier Giorgio’s time cared about social issues, there was something unusually deep and genuine about the way Pier Giorgio loved the poor. It wasn’t political activism. It wasn’t just volunteering for an organization. It was, as Pier Giorgio himself put it, a way of doing good for others and for his own soul.
That’s the paradox. When we give ourselves away in love, we don’t lose. We receive. The burdens we carry are lightened because we share in Christ’s own mission.
Let us pray,
O God, who show the light of your truth to those who go astray, so that they may return to the right path, give all who for the faith they profess are accounted Christians the grace to reject whatever is contrary to the name of Christ and to strive after all that does it honor. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.
