With a tip of the biretta to Fr. Blake, o{]:¬) I offer for your consideration a story about holiness.
15 Year Old offered his life for Pope and Church
(CNA).- In October of 2006, Carlo Acutis was 15 years old and was fading fast from leukemia. A native of Milan, Acutis touched family members and friends with his witness of offering the sufferings of his illness for the Church and the Pope. His testimony of faith, which could lead to his beatification in the coming years, has moved Italy.
“The Eucharist: My Road to Heaven: A Biography of Carlo Acutis” is the title of the book by Nicola Gori, a writer for the L’Osservatore Romano, and published by Ediciones San Pablo.
According to the publishers, Carlo “was a teen of our times, like many others. He tried hard in school, with his friends, [and] he loved computers. At the same time he was a great friend of Jesus Christ, he was a daily communicant and he trusted in the Virgin Mary. Succumbing to leukemia at the age of 15, he offered his life for the Pope and for the Church. Those who have read about his life are moved to profound admiration. The book was born of a desire to tell everyone his simple and incredible human and profoundly Christian story.”
“As a little boy, especially after his First Communion, he never missed his daily appointment with the Holy Mass and the Rosary, followed by a moment of Eucharistic adoration,” recalls his mother, Antonia Acutis.
“With this intense spiritual life, Carlo has fully and generously lived his fifteen years of life, leaving a profound impact on those who knew him. He was an expert with computers, he read books on computer engineering and left everyone in awe, but he put his gift at the service of others and used it to help his friends,” she added.
“His immense generosity made him interested in everyone: the foreigners, the handicapped, children, beggars. To be close to Carlo was to be close to a fountain of fresh water,” his mother said.
Antonia recalls clearly that “shortly before his death, Carlo offered his sufferings for the Pope and the Church. Surely the heroism with which he faced his illness and death has convinced many that he was truly somebody special. When the doctor that was treating him asked him if he was suffering a lot, Carlo answered: ‘There are people who suffer much more than me!”
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Ora pro nobis.
So lets offer up our sufferings, great and small for the Pope and his Marshall Plan for the Church.
How great is God Almighty and all His Works.
Deo Gatias
HOw much this young man reminds me of other Catholic saints, all of who died young and were tremendous examples of holiness: Saint Aloysius Gonzaga, St. Gabriel of the Sorrowful Mother (Passionists), St. Therese of the Child Jesus (Discalced Carmelites), Dominic Savio,(Salesian student) St. Gemma Galgani (lay Passionist), and Saints Teresa of the Andes and Elizabeth of the Trinity, both Discalced Carmelite Nuns.
It’s amazing that this wonderful young man had the classical, traditional Catholic spirituality of the great Saints that, with the Vatican II reforms, liturgy etc., one would think is gone.
Which proves that even when those in Church authority degrade, mock, and ridicule Catholic traditions (even the Mass, Sacraments, and devotions), we can all remain steadfast in our devotion anyway, despite these people. Not all of us can have such a magnificent soul as this young man…but trying is better than not trying at all. Or defaming those who do try.
It is not everyday when you read something like this, a young man with such holiness that it inspires others. You have the fine example of St. Anoysius Gonzaga, yet in this day and age with the unholy trinity of “Me, Myself, and I” being pushed throughout society to our young people. It refreshing and humbling to know that someone 15 years old as achieve something that I try to do everyday and yet fail. I shall follow the fine examples of these young saints and young Carlo, to offer my sufferings towards something better than myself.
Beautiful. Thanks for this post, Father Z.
Thanks, Father. Good to know.
Wonderful story..
Very nice. And so exceptional and hard to believe that despite the modernist deviations such sanctity can still silently flourish in an Italian parish in a village. Until his beatification we should however ask the reverend priests to continue to offer many Requiem Masses for this good boy’s redemption from purgatory, if he had still some to expiate for.
This story reminds me of the Flemish Saint, the Servant of God Herman Wijns who died in 1941 in Antwerp, and had always been a faithful altar server since his 7th birthday until he fell ill at 10 years old. He died while a priest said a Mass for the Sick (after Confession and the Extreme Unction) on an altar stone of a travelling altar in Herman’s bedroom in the hospital.
May God grant us many holy boys and girls who offer their lives for the holy Roman Catholic Church in this her deepest crisis ever. And may parents come to realize how precious a good education in the faith is for all children, and how a worthy example of parents may even produce saints. Children are less attached to habits of the world and more spontaneous in procuring sanctity in Jesus Christ.