Come and Pray...

Mountain altar dedicated to Pier Giorgio Frassati

All my life, I've loved the beach.  I love the sound of the waves and the power that emanates from them.  I love the roar and the undulation.  I love the breeze, the sun, the sand, the song of the birds.  I love the beach.

In 2006, I learned to love the mountains.  I love the sound of silence found at the top of a mountain peak.  I love the crisp, cool air you can breathe there.  I love the view of the horizon, the glacier tops, the clanking of the cowbells from the herds grazing below.  I love the exhausted euphoric feeling upon reaching the top.  I never thought I would, but, thanks to Pier Giorgio, I love the mountains.

What I experience so intensely in both places is God's presence: His greatness, my smallness.  My earthly cares drift out to sea with each wave and into the sky with each step taken upward along a rocky path.  God's assertion of His majesty to Job comes to mind:

"Where were you when I founded the earth?   ... Who determined its size? ... Who stretched out the measuring line for it? Who shut within doors the sea, when it burst forth from the womb, When I made the clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling bands? When I set limits for it and fastened the bar of its door, And said: Thus far shall you come but no farther, and here shall your proud waves stop? Have you ever in your lifetime commanded the morning and shown the dawn its place? (Job 38: 4,5, 8-12)

Not one of my troubles is too big for God to handle.  Maybe too big for me to handle but not for Him.  

I am about to begin the Novena in Honor of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati that will lead up to his fourth of July feast day.  It is such a powerful novena and over the years I have seen much fruit come from it.  This year, many people have submitted petitions to be included in the novena.  It is humbling to read the burdens and cares of others, no matter what my own are.  And yet I know with certainty that not one person is outside of the loving embrace of God.  And that every prayer will be answered in His time, in His way.  Our part, the praying, is the easiest part of it all.  

Pier Giorgio once wrote to his good friend Isidoro Bonini, "I would like for us to pledge a pact that knows no earthly boundaries or temporal limits: union in prayer."  I firmly believe he will be praying with us and interceding for us in a special way in the coming days.  The graces that await us are more numerous than the sand on the seashore.  The peace to be bestowed is more penetrating than the mountain sun. Whatever you are doing, wherever you are going, don't miss this opportunity to come and pray.  Verso l'alto!