Sainthood is Within Reach

“Holiness is within reach.” I stare at his black-and-white photograph, and he stares straight back at me, confident. He is almost smiling, earnest, yet no stranger to suffering. He is a real man, who was born less than a hundred years before I was, and who died less than a hundred years ago. But he is not just a real man, he is also a saint, soon to be canonized, and he conveys with assurance, as he said to his friends while on earth, “Holiness is within reach.” Not just for people who lived long ago, or for the nun in the cloister, or for “other people,” but for me, and for you, “holiness is within reach,” actually, today, now. 

Pier Giorgio Frassati’s claim that “holiness is within reach” began making sense to me on my first backpacking trip, as a college freshman, back in 2020. I was struggling to hike several miles a day with 40-some pounds on my back, struggling to connect with the other women in my group, and struggling to hear God. On the third day of that trip, we woke up at 4 a.m. to climb a mountain. I still remember how impossibly high the summit was, as I looked up at it; it stretched into the starry sky and blotted out a portion of the stars. We began to walk. We climbed higher than I had ever been in my life. My legs and lungs were burning, and I thought that I would never make it to the top. A few hours later, though, I was standing on the summit; although it had felt impossible, it was actually within my reach. That feeling of approaching the impossible, step by step, is one I have become familiar with through subsequent climbs, but it never grows stale.

Sainthood is “within reach” like that mountaintop was within my reach. If and when I start climbing, I will definitely reach the summit, as long as I don’t sit down on a boulder or turn around and crawl back into my warm sleeping bag. Holiness is “within reach” because it is the Father’s will for us, because He loves us too much to let us sleep in when there is an incredible mountain waiting to be climbed. When Pier Giorgio Frassati says that “holiness is within reach,” he means it, and his life proves it.

One thing I love about Blessed Pier Giorgio is how I can relate to him. He lived a lay life amidst a family who were not particularly Christian, he studied at a university, and he enjoyed time with friends, adventures in the outdoors, and a good Tuscan cigar. He used modern conveniences and witnessed political unrest. In all of these experiences, he sought Jesus Christ. Pier Giorgio’s relationship with Christ was rooted in prayer — “Only prayers can obtain from God the desired improvement,” he said to a friend — and from prayer this relationship overflowed into vigorous service, whether service of his agnostic family, his friends, or the poor in his own city (whom he also befriended). 

Pier Giorgio invested in his friends and made time to go adventuring with them. His love for others and for the “pure air” of the mountains was not separate from his love for God; rather, it flowed from God and led back to God. Frassatti writes, “Every day, my love for the mountains grows more and more. If my studies permitted, I’d spend whole days in the mountains contemplating the Creator’s greatness in that pure air.” The mountains, the desert, all aspects of the natural world, are, like the Scriptures,  from God and are for the purpose of telling us about His love. The natural world, writes St. Augustine, can and should be contemplated, “read” like a book. It is God’s love letter to us. 

A handwritten letter, especially in our electronic era, is a gift, an intensely personal gift. Your friend’s personality shines even in the kind of stationery they use, the way their pen moves across the page, their deliberate choice of words. They made the effort to sit down and write by hand, for you, and their presence somehow remains with this piece of paper as you read it. Creation is like that. Just as a friend’s letter is personal, so Fremont Peak or the Kaibab Wilderness is personal. Just as God has something for each of us when we open the Bible and pray with a passage of Scripture, so He has something for each of us when we, like Pier Giorgio, contemplate the Creator’s goodness in creation.

But when we take time to contemplate His goodness in creation, we usually learn something else: that His goodness is bound up with His suffering and ours. I have been struck by the way that Pier Giorgio writes about suffering: He calls it a “difficult battle,” but also something “beautiful,” something mysterious that leads us deep into the heart of God. He writes, “without [faith], what would our lives be? Nothing, or rather, wasted, because in life there is only suffering, and Suffering without faith is unbearable. But suffering that is nourished by the flame of faith becomes something beautiful, because it tempers the soul to deal with suffering.” 

Last fall, I was instructing a backpacking course with 9th grade girls in the Moab desert. It was the fourth morning of a week-long trip, and everyone was tired. Rain had been pouring down since the evening before; wet sand was clinging to everything, and mud caked our boots. The sky was gray, the rocks were gray, the wind was sharp and cold. It was uncomfortable. Walking into the kitchen area, I saw two groups of girls beneath our shelter. One group was huddled, sad and dripping, grumbling about the cold, the rain, how there was sand in their ears, how they didn’t want to be there and wished the pain would stop. The second group was gathered in a different way: they were playing a game and dissolving in bouts of laughter. They were enduring the same pain as the girls in the first group; all were wet, cold, tired, and somewhat disenchanted with the desert. Why then did their burden seem so much lighter?  The girls in the first group were resisting the suffering, and in the process of resistance, were suffering more than the girls who accepted the suffering and focused on those around them instead. As a result, their suffering was forged into a bonding experience, a funny memory, and a testament to the power of community. I admired those girls and hoped that the others would join them.

A few weeks later, though, I found myself being one of the “suffering-resisters.” We were three weeks into a desert instructor course, and after many miles and intense elevation gain, the sun had set, we were still hiking, and I found myself grumbling. At that moment, I noticed that our two instructors and our chaplain were making goofy bird noises and laughing together. They were accepting the suffering and moving through it. I think that Pier Giorgio would have done the same. Time in God’s wilderness brings suffering to the forefront and is a chance to practice what a Saint would do with it. 

While I still struggle to find Christ in the cross, whether that cross is a wet and windy day or something else, I have also experienced suffering that is worth it. Later on that same instructor trip in the desert, for example, we were going on a day hike. Our goal: a high point overlooking the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. The approach was long, steep and slippery, but when I clambered over the final boulders and stood on the ridgeline, the vista was so stunning that to this day I can’t find words to describe it. I would go through that tough night hike and long climb again, in a heartbeat, just to see it again, or to allow someone else to see it. The suffering was worth it. Pier Giorgio was able to see that all suffering, when endured with Faith, is worth it because it can lead us deeper into the Father’s heart. That’s a grace I have not yet received but will continue to pray for.

Perhaps you, too, have experienced the power of the wilderness and have come to better know the Creator by contemplating His works. Or perhaps you have not yet had that opportunity. If your state in life permits, I invite you to follow Pier Giorgio’s example and spend some time in the mountains this summer, “contemplating the Creator’s goodness in that pure air.” The summit, like holiness, is within reach.