Most of you know that I love learning about the saints, both those who are officially canonized and those who are members of the community of saints who have not been officially canonized yet. Thea Bowman, Dorothy Day, and Thomas Merton are several Americans who may become official saints one day, but even though they are not canonized yet in the Church, they are admired by many and are saints in the eyes of many for their contributions to the faith and for the way the lived out their faith. I saw a meditation recently on a Belgian Dominican friar named Dominique Pire who died on January 30 back in 1969, but I had not heard of him before, even though he had received the Nobel Peace Prize back in 1958. During WWII, he served as a chaplain for the Belgian resistance movement against the Nazis and provided help to the Allied forces. His main humanitarian work happened after the war, when he founded organizations that helped refugees. In fact, he helped found villages in Austria and Germany where refugees and displaced persons could establish a new life. He once said: “Let us learn, then, once and for all, to see a human bother in each person …. Let us learn, also, once and for all, to assess a man at his true value, a value which is always infinite.”
In a world that is so divided into factions today, where there is often so much anger and blame in the words we say to each others, Dominique Pire is a true example of the love of Christ. The seeds that we hear about in the Gospel today truly found rich receptive soil in the life of Dominique Pire. May our lives provide that same rich soil for Christ.
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