A Tale of Two Cities

I slept through the tornado activity here in Nashville the other night but woke to the headlines popping up on my phone.  It wasn't long before the texts started coming from friends and family to see if everything was okay.

Actually, everything was more than okay.  On this side of town, you wouldn't even know there had been a storm.  The sun came out, we hit almost 70 degrees and went about the day as usual.  Across town, the story was quite the opposite.  Death and destruction in the aftermath of a tornado that caught most people off guard in the middle of the night.  A state of emergency, rescue efforts, non-stop news coverage and appeals for help.  Same city; two completely different scenarios. 

After talking with friends about how surreal the situation was, I started thinking about Pier Giorgio's life in Turin.  He lived in the better quarter of the city but he spent a lot of his time walking the streets of the poorer quarters.  Many people saw him dragging a wooden cart through the streets when he would help some family move their meager belongings from one place to another.  Most of the cases for his work with the conference of St. Vincent de Paul led him into areas of the city that many in his social sphere would never have set foot in. 

When his friends asked him how he could handle the stench of some of those places or interact with people with terrible illnesses, his answer was simple: he saw Christ in them.

“Don’t ever forget that even though the house is sordid, you are approaching Christ.  Around the sick, the poor, and the unfortunate, I see a particular light, a light that we do not have.”

It's a beautiful yet strange thing to see how willingly and quickly people will respond in the case of a natural disaster.  And the Nashville community is outstanding at times like these, I'm proud to say.  I guess the challenge is to learn to recognize and respond to the needs of suffering people when there is no tornado or flood or fire.  They're always there - across town or maybe just across the room. 

May Blessed Pier Giorgio help us this Lent to see the light that he saw and be Christ to the people around us.

"O Father, you gave to the young Pier Giorgio Frassati
the joy of meeting Christ
and of living his faith in the service of the poor and the sick;
through his intercession may we, too, walk the path of the beatitudes
and follow the example of his generosity,
spreading the spirit of the Gospel in society.
Through Christ our Lord, Amen."

Verso l'alto!   ///cmw  
#NashvilleStrong