Today is July 5, Saturday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time.
We read at today’s Mass, “People do not put new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise the skins burst, the wine spills out, and the skins are ruined. Rather, they pour new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved” (Mt 9:17).
That’s the kind of transformation the Gospel brings — a new vessel, a renewed life. And today, as we continue our devotional journey with Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, we turn to the fifth Beatitude: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”
Mercy isn’t just a feeling; it’s an action. And in Pier Giorgio’s life, mercy meant concrete, personal service. His love for the poor was not abstract. It was embodied, face-to-face, often in uncomfortable and humbling circumstances.
Carlo Florio, a fellow member of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, once confessed that he didn’t initially serve with conviction. But it was Pier Giorgio who changed him. He said, “It was he who taught me how to do works of charity.”
Carlo remembered asking how Pier Giorgio could enter homes with such overwhelming smells and squalor and how he could remain cheerful in such conditions. And Pier Giorgio’s response?
“Don’t ever forget that even though the house is sordid, you are approaching Christ … The good you do to the poor is good done to me,” he added, quoting the Lord.
The heart of mercy
That’s the heart of mercy: seeing Christ in the poor, in the sick, in those who are hard to love. And Pier Giorgio saw it clearly. He once said, “Around the sick, the poor, the unfortunate, I see a particular light — a light that we do not have.”
It’s true. Many who serve the poor, whether in soup kitchens, food pantries or through the St. Vincent de Paul Society, will tell you that there’s a grace there, a mysterious radiance. The light of Christ shines in the margins.
So today, let’s ask ourselves: Do we seek that light? Do we approach the poor with the same reverence we’d bring to Christ himself?
Let us pray,
O God, who through the grace of adoption chose us to be children of light, grant, we pray, that we may not be wrapped in the darkness of error but always be seen to stand in the bright light of truth. 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.
