Tenderness in Small Things 

In a recent article published on Word on Fire, author Leah Libresco Sargeant wrote about the second miracle attributed to Pier Giorgio Frassati that will lead to his canonization by Pope Francis this summer. Handsome, charismatic, and deeply religious, Frassati was known for organizing mountain climbing excursions with his friends, for encouraging his peers to lives of virtue, and for advocating Catholic Social Teaching in debates with Communists and Fascists in his native Italy. Pier Giorgio died in 1925 at the age of 24 from polio, likely contracted while visiting sick friends in the city slums of Turin. 

The first miracle attributed to Pier Giorgio Frassati took place in 1933. A 40-year-old man named Domenico Sellan had contracted a fatal disease of the spine that left him paralyzed. A priest visited Sellan on his deathbed and encouraged him to ask Frassati to pray for him. After praying, Sellan suddenly recovered and lived for another 35 years. It was a dramatic and medically inexplicable healing, attributed to Frassati’s intercession, leading to his beatification in 1990. 

A second miracle took place in 2017. A seminarian from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles named Juan Gutierrez was playing pick-up basketball with some of his classmates. He suddenly heard a “pop,” the sound of his Achilles tendon tearing, which would require surgery to repair followed by a period of intense rehabilitation. Feeling sad about his injury and nervous about the impending operation, Gutierrez sat in the seminary chapel and prayed. There, he had a thought that he should pray a novena. But to which saint? He heard a whisper in his head suggesting Pier Giorgio Frassati. Although he didn’t have a devotion to Frassati, Gutierrez began the 9-day prayer, consisting of the simple phrase: “Lord, through the intercession of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, I ask you to help me in my injury.” A few days later, while kneeling in the chapel, he began to feel a warm sensation in his injured heel. Leaving the chapel, he discovered he didn’t need his crutches. During his next visit to his orthopedic surgeon, the doctor reported that his Achilles had completely and inexplicably healed. 

Reflecting on the event, Libresco Sargeant notes that Gutierrez’s situation seems trivial compared with Sellan’s. Yet, she writes: “I find the miracle so moving because it is a sign of God’s (and Pier Giorgio’s) tenderness in small things. It is easy to divide our lives into two domains: the parts of our life we need God’s help for, and the bits that can (and maybe should) pass under his notice. Gutierrez’s miracle is an encouragement to give every part of our day to God, not just the parts that obviously need his help.” The healing of now-Fr. Guttierrez shows us that there is nothing so trivial that we cannot share it with the Lord and confidently ask His help with it.