It was our final day at World Youth Day in Krakow when I finally got a chance to go to the Dominican Church and stop for a bit of prayer before the relics of Bl. Pier Giorgio. I had already "met" him a year earlier in Turin Italy, where his relics are usually kept, but this time I had another year of seminary under my belt, I was now only two years away from priestly ordination, and I had just experienced the exiting and intense graces of the preceding week. Yet, the amazingness of the vocation before me, before all of us at WYD - of announcing Jesus Christ to the world, and especially in our own lives - was intimidating just as it was exciting.
Needless to say, Pier Giorgio knows how to encourage one in the vocation of giving everything over to Our Lord! I was only there for about 30 minutes, but I had a great conversation with a man my own age, and a friend and a brother in Christ, and his encouragement to this day continuously re-fires my zeal, gives me the courage to each and every day give myself a little bit more fully over to Christ, and challenges me to let the love of Christ pour through me to all I meet.
Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati, pray for us!
-Dominic