I have a few announcements here.  This will be a longer email than usual, but you might appreciate it.  (I have numbered the parts of it, so that you can skim or skip the parts you find less interesting.)

1. The Frassati Core Team told me not to cancel Christ and the City for the month of November simply because it falls on Thanksgiving.  And I always obey them.  So we will have Christ in the City on Thursday, November 30th.

2. We did a radio show at St. Gabriel Radio on Bl. Pier Giorgio and our Frassati Society just last week!  If you’d like to listen to it, you can find it here in the “Dominican Dimensions Archives” along with weekly shows going all the way back to 1/25/16 (on the Twilight Zone?  Really?):

3. I suggested that we do a radio show on the above subject mentioned in part “2” of this email partly because I was personally very much inspired by reading this short article about Bl. Pier Giorgio (which I also previously posted on our facebook page).  I encourage you all to read it and be inspired!  Verso l’alto!

4. Three things really leaped (I guess the correct spelling is leaped, not lept, come to find out – though I much prefer lept, d*** it) out at me:

     a.) Pier Giorgio spent a lot of time in nightly adoration… so he’d probably be quite at home at our main event.

     b.) He joined every Catholic group he could in an effort to completely immerse himself in a Catholic culture.  So he’d probably be a part of our group (though perhaps confused).

     c.) Pier Giorgio had a tremendous love for the poor, and he went out of his way to help them in practical ways on an almost daily basis.

5. I’ve been wanting to take up a kind of model for our group that is inspired by Bl. Pier Giorgio’s own path to holiness, one which can help form a complete Catholic culture among young adults, one which meets all felt (and so far unfelt) needs and desires, and one which has three essential aspects:

     a.) A Spiritual Aspect: captured by our main monthly Thursday events.

     b.) A Social Aspect: captured generally by our 2 or 3 monthly social events.

     c.) A Service Project: a way to give back…  For how should we do that exactly?  And can we really be intentional disciples of Christ if we do not?

6. I’ve been waiting to truly begin this 3rd aspect of our society simply because I didn’t think we were there yet, for people need to receive from others before they can truly give of themselves out of love to others.  But now we have an awesome core team of 14 members and I think it is now high time to launch this!

I would like to invite you all to consider joining us in the Columbus Relief Service Project.  You can read all about it here:

 https://www.columbusrelief.org/

If you find this inspiring, and you’d like to volunteer with us, some of us will be meeting at Holy Family Soup Kitchen (http://hfsk.org/) this Saturday from 11:00am to 12:00pm at least.  But if you’d like to volunteer with us, you need to register beforehand on the above Columbus Relief website sometime in the next couple of days.  (Sorry for the short notice, but sometimes I get impatient.)

“For I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat” (Mt 25:35).

A lot of people ask me, “Should I give money to homeless people?  I often feel badly for pretending not to even see them.”  And I feel obliged to list the reasons why this might not actually be the most prudent way to truly help them, especially if it is in somewhat unsafe circumstances, etc.  But if you want to have a great way to help the poor that is safe, most prudent, and most helpful in every way (physically and spiritually): I cannot imagine a better way to do it as a young adult (male or female) than to participate in this program.

7. On a completely different note, meeting the very real need to have some good, wholesome fun: there are now only 3 slots left (as of the exact moment of the writing of this email) for our Frassati Escape Room Event on November 19th!  I know it is still almost a month away, and you don’t generally plan things that for in advance…  But it’s going to be a BLAST, and you don’t want to miss out!!  You gotta move fast if you want to join us in escaping the very hungry, very scary zombie in time!!  His chain lengthens 1 foot every 5 minutes!    This is the first test!  And remember, it is not the first 12 who sign up who are the Trapped and Terrified Twelve – it is the first 12 who PAY!  (I need to be clear about this, because there was a some unfortunate confusion last time…)

For more info on this event, find it on our Columbus Frassati Society facebook page:

If you have any other questions, feel free to email us (if we are still alive)!

Verso l’alto!

– Fr. Jerome