ST PIER GIORGIO FRASSATI AND THE MEANING OF ‘VERSO L’ALTO…TOWARDS THE HEIGHTS’

Fr Billy Swan

This Sunday, 7^th September, Pope Leo will canonise Blessed Carlo Acutis and Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati as saints during a Mass in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Perhaps Carlo Acutis is the better known of the two Italian young men who died prematurely and who will be raised to the altars on Sunday. But who was Pier Giorgio Frassati?

Pier Giorgio Frassati was born in Turin on April 6th, 1901. He was the son of Alfredo Frassati, the founder and director of the daily Italian newspaper La Stampa, and Adelaide Ametis - a woman with a strong character and an artistic temperament. His father was an agnostic and his mother was a formal believer from whom Pier Giorgio received the rudimentary basics of the Christian faith.

Pier Giorgio attended public school and then an educational institute run by the Jesuits. There he became familiar with the spiritual exercises of St Ignatius of Loyola and began to participate in daily Mass - something he would do for the rest of his life. In 1918 he enrolled at the Polytechnic University of Turin. This was fulfil his ambition to become a mining engineer - ‘to be able to serve Christ even more among the miners’. As a student he wore the badge of the Catholic Youth in his lapel, of which he made the motto his own: ‘Prayer, Action, Sacrifice’.

During his student days, his faith deepened and grew, nourished by daily Eucharist, prayer and frequent confession. He also discovered the beauty and wisdom of God’s Word in the Scriptures that was unusual at the time for the Bible was not the staple spiritual diet for Catholics. Trusting totally in the words of Jesus, he saw the presence of God in his neighbour, considering himself ‘poor like all the poor’:

In the strong tensions of the first post-war period he involved himself in social apostolates. Convinced of the need for social reforms, in 1920 he joined the Italian Popular Party which he saw as a means to create a more just society. Social problems were burning and political tensions were strong. Pier Giorgio, who had a great love for peace, firmly believed in the possibility of building a just society of equality and freedom, where goods were equally distributed.

He was aware that charitable action is not enough and that problems must be solved on the level of social order.

In 1920 his father Alfredo Frassati was appointed ambassador to Germany which meant that Pier Giorgio followed him to Berlin. There, the future saint visited the poorest neighbourhoods and came into contact with young German Catholic students and workers. With understanding and compassion, he stood close to the German people who were undergoing severe hardship at the time, caused by the loss of the First World War and the sanctions from the Treaty of Versailles.

Mussolini's rise to power troubled the young Pier Giorgio as he has been openly against fascism. So too was he deeply concerned about the rise of National Socialism in Germany and the momentum behind its aggressive forms.

Pier Giorgio was passionate about opera, visited museums, loved painting and music and knew entire passages of Dante by heart. He loved the passion and spiritual emotion in the writings of his fellow Italian St Catherine of Siena. She inspired him to enter the Third Dominican Order in 1922 with the name of ‘Fra Girolamo’.

Two months before graduation, his exuberant youth was cut short by fulminant polio, probably contracted while assisting the poor. He died in Turin on 4^th July 1925. Two days later, the overflowing crowd at his funeral began to reveal to his family and the world the greatness of his Christian testimony. Thus began the long journey that would lead to his beatification on May 20th, 1990 by Pope St John Paul II and now to his canonisation on Sunday by Pope Leo XIV.

There is an Italian phrase associated with Pier Giorgio Frassati that has taken on a deeper significance over time. ‘Verso l’alto’ translates as ‘towards the heights’. It was scribbled on a photograph by Pier Giorgio in 1925 and is often inscribed on photos of him taken on mountain tops that he loved to climb.

‘Towards the heights’ is a metaphor, a descriptive symbol, emerging from his love of mountain climbing but one that also reflects the deep interiority of a saint who understood perfectly how friendship with God raises us above our basic needs and desires to a destiny that is above and beyond what we can see.

As we climb a mountain, we begin to grasp the breath of the landscape beneath with greater clarity. We see where houses, villages and fields are in relation to each other; we see where towns-lands and parishes intersect, where rivers flow and where the land meets the sea. With the panoramic view on the mountain top, we have a fuller perspective on the whole of the landscape – a perspective that is only possible from the heights.

This ascending metaphor captures the transcendent nature of human beings. We all have base needs and desires such as food, water, shelter, sleep. We have instincts like preservation, propagation of our species, the desire to love and discover what is true. Yet, there is a momentum that lifts us beyond these things to search for consummation and ultimate meaning and happiness. In the words of St Gregory the Great, we long to see life whole and how all the words of our lives combine to form a singular story.

Our experience of beauty, goodness and truth take us out of ourselves to a higher plane of existence. There is an orientation of one’s life that either raises us closer to that higher existence or pushes us away from it, leading to frustration and sadness. The real question, therefore, is what we are tending towards.

For Pier Giorgio, ‘verso l’alto’ described tending towards the summit and fulfilment of all desire which is intimate union with God. His love for climbing mountains was not just about physical exercise but a spiritual experience of transcendence and getting closer to the highest and purest source of love who is God. He once wrote:

‘Every day that passes, I fall more desperately in love with the mountains… I am ever more determined to climb the mountains, to scale the mighty peaks, to feel that pure joy which can only be felt in the mountains’.

Writing to his friend Isidoro Bonini in February of 1925, he said:

‘Everyday, I understand better what a grace it is to be Catholic…To live without a Faith, without a patrimony to defend, without a steady struggle for the Truth, is not living but existing.  We must never exist but live’.

It is interesting to note in Scripture how mountain-tops are places of encounter between God and humans. We see it with Moses on Mount Sinai, with Jesus on Mount Tabor and on the hill of Calvary where the love of the Father was fully revealed in Christ crucified. Mountain-tops are places of encounter with the divine and revelation by God. Encounter with God occurs when we ascend and God descends to meet us. This is what happens in Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh who descended from God to become one like us so that we might ascend to become more like Him.

It is also interesting to note that this sense of elevation and ascension is present in the Liturgy and especially at the Eucharist. As the priest prepares for the Eucharist Prayer, he says to the congregation in the preface of the Mass, “Lift up your hearts…Sursum Corda”. This beautiful moment in the Eucharist signifies that the true elevation of the human heart is about to take place in the Eucharist where the Body, Blood, Soul and divinity of Christ fuses with our body, blood, soul and humanity when we receive Holy Communion. Here is the summit, the heights for which we are made.

According to Pier Giorgio, ‘in prayer, the soul rises above life’s sadnesses’ and raises our spirits to see our suffering from the perspective of our eternal salvation and the saving of the world. In the words of St Ignatius of Loyola, ‘We are created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save our soul.  And the other things on the face of the earth are created for humanity and that they may help him in prosecuting the end for which he is created’ (St. Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, n. 23).

‘Verso l’alto’ is a phrase that expresses what Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati pointed to – namely an adventure greater than mountains can offer.  As he is canonised a saint this Sunday, he shows young people in particular not to remain on the ground of our own fears and desires but to recognise a higher destiny to which we ascend with God’s grace to live a noble and beautiful life. Let us listen to the voice of God within us that lifts us higher and moves us closer to our ultimate destiny of eternal union with Him.

St Pier Giorgio Frassati, pray for us!