Luigi Guanella

Luigi Guanella was born on 19 December 1842 at Fraciscio, a hamlet of Campodolcino in the Diocese of Como, the ninth of thirteen children of Lorenzo Guanella and Maria Bianchi. The day after his birth he received Baptism. His parents were exemplary Christians, devoted to family, farm work, and shepherding. In the home the Rosary was recited and the lives of the saints were read—an experience that marked his whole apostolic life.

At twelve he entered the seminary. On 26 May 1866 he was ordained a priest in Como and the following year was named parish priest of Savogno. During seven years of zealous ministry he came into contact with Don Bosco and with the Cottolengo work in Turin. Longing for a more radical religious life, in 1875 he went to Don Bosco and pronounced religious vows for a three-year period. The Bishop of Como recalled him to the diocese; Don Guanella returned with the dream of founding an institution for needy boys. He opened a school that later had to close because of hostility from the civil authorities.

What he called "the hour of mercy"—the favorable moment of divine favor—struck in November 1881, when he arrived as parish priest at Pianello Lario and found a group of young women already dedicated to assisting the needy. That group became the seed of a new congregation: the Daughters of Saint Mary of Providence. His apostolic zeal and charity enlarged the work until it could expand into the heart of the city of Como. There began the activity of the "House of Divine Providence," which became the mother house of both the women's and the men's congregations. Beside the sisters, Don Guanella gathered priests whom he called the Servants of Charity. Their motto was "In omnibus caritas"—in all things love.

"One cannot stop as long as there are poor people to help," he often repeated on his pilgrimages among the wounds of poverty. For that reason the two religious families spread through various regions of Italy and into the nearby Swiss Confederation, in the Cantons of Grisons and Ticino. In 1904 he realized the dream of reaching the holy city, Rome, to stand beside the Pope and give luminous witness of charity and apostolic ardor. Saint Pius X, who recognized the greatness of Don Guanella's heart, esteemed him and entrusted him with the desire to build a church dedicated to the Transit of Saint Joseph. Beside the parish arose the Pious Union of the Transit of Saint Joseph, an association of prayers for the dying; Saint Pius X wished to be its first enrollee. Missionary zeal then drew him among Italian emigrants in North America: in December 1912, at the age of seventy, he embarked and reached the United States.

His last extraordinary intervention came in January 1915, when he remained in Rome to aid the earthquake victims of Abruzzo. At his side worked with zeal the Venerable Aurelio Bacciarini, first parish priest of Saint Joseph, his successor in governing the Servants of Charity, and later Bishop of Lugano. The infirmities of old age, Italy's entry into the First World War, and the commitment of some confreres at the military front undermined his health. In his writings he had left this message: death is like a mother who embraces her child; it is the angel who leads us back to the homeland. That mother, shining like an angel, came at 2:15 in the afternoon on Sunday, 24 October 1915. It was a Sunday without sunset. His remains rest in the Sanctuary of the Sacred Heart in Como. He was beatified by Pope Paul VI on 25 October 1964 and canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on 23 October 2011.

May Saint Luigi Guanella intercede for us, and let us practice today his tireless charity toward the poorest.

BEATIFICATION OF THE PRIEST LUIGI GUANELLA

HOMILY OF PAUL VI

Sunday, 25 October 1964

We wish to greet all those who, together with Us, rejoice in the Beatification of Don Luigi Guanella: first of all the Bishop of Como, who sees his great and also very dear to Us diocese shine with such a beautiful and distinctive light of holiness; and with the worthy and fortunate Pastor are the representatives of the municipality of Campodolcino, in whose territory, at Franciscio, the Blessed was born: a beautiful alpine village, which We have traversed several times when We visited the Alpine House of Alpe Motta, and once to bless the great statue of the Madonna of Europe erected at the foot of the alpine snows, and then again descending to pay homage, beyond Pianazzo, to the Madonna of Gallivaggio. Thus certainly deserving of Our greeting are the Faithful, here present, from Prosto, from Savogno, from Traona, from Gravedona, from Olmo, from Pianello, where Don Guanella exercised his pastoral ministry and began his work. Deserving of it are the Salesians of Don Bosco, who was a great teacher and friend to the new Blessed and, with his teaching and his example, helped him to determine his vocation as Founder. Thus to the Authorities and to the Faithful of Como, of Sondrio and of the whole Valtellina We express Our pleasure and Our good wishes.

But at this moment Our thought goes in a special way to the Religious Families founded by Don Guanella: the Servants of Charity, and the Daughters of Saint Mary of Providence, whom we see here rejoicing in great numbers, and who are both well known also in Rome, where they lavish admirable labors in two Parishes and in various assistance homes. Joyful and paternal is Our thought to the formation houses of the Servants of Charity, to their Schools and to their works for Youth (We recall among all the complex of institutions around the new and beautiful church of St. Cajetan, which We consecrated, in Milan); it goes to the Institutes for the disabled, for the poor, for the elderly, to the seaside and mountain Colonies and to the distant Missions, to the Shrines assisted by the Sons of Don Guanella. And thus in this blessed hour We have present to Our spirit the innumerable institutions of piety, of education, of assistance, in Italy and abroad, where the excellent and pious Daughters of Saint Mary of Providence, silently, assiduously give splendid witness to the charity of Christ.

What armies of followers and favorites of the Gospel! What a population of children, of workers, of the faithful, of sufferers, of the sick, of the unhappy, of the elderly, do we see around Don Guanella, and now all with their gaze turned toward Us: what a people of charity! What a city of Christ! What a garden of fervor, of sorrow and of love! We greet you, all most dear; We would wish to speak to each one; We would wish to communicate Our joy to each one, and from all to receive yours for this happy day; all, in the Lord, We bless you. You are the family of Don Guanella; you are his glory; you are his greatness!

At this point Our consideration of the magnificent picture of the works of Don Guanella seems before us to transform into a vision, and to present to us precisely him, the new Blessed Don Luigi Guanella, who, admiring himself the living and shining circle of his Sons and of his beneficiaries, placidly but authoritatively still admonishes us, as he used to do when he was still in this earthly life: "It is God who does it!" It is divine Providence. Everything is of God: the idea, the vocation, the capacity to act, the success, the merit, the glory are of God, not of man. This vision of active and victorious good is an effective reflection of divine Goodness, which has found the ways to manifest itself and to operate among us. "It is God who does it!"

This imaginary, but not illusory conversation, seems to Us to satisfy in good part the secret desire that is, at the end of this solemn ceremony, in each one of us: the desire to understand. After having known, admired, and exalted the life of a servant of God, declared an authentic follower of Christ, there arises in the soul the legitimate, indeed the dutiful curiosity to understand how and why the new phenomenon of holiness has been produced on this human scene of ours. We would like to grasp the secret and seize the inner principle of such holiness; we would like to reduce to a single unifying point of view the adventurous, complicated, and feverish story of the prodigious life of the new Blessed, who becomes for us worthy of imitation and of veneration. This is a customary tendency of the modern mentality, when it sets itself to the study of some singular personality. And it would not be easy to succeed in classifying under a single aspect the figure of Don Guanella, if he himself did not help us and almost impose upon us to see in him nothing other than an effect of the divine Goodness, a fruit, a sign of divine Providence.

It is not that this act of humility and religiosity of his tells us everything about him; so many other aspects of his figure would offer us that focal point of view that would allow us to define in synthesis his soul and his work; but for now, as a farewell and a remembrance of the Beatification of Don Guanella, we can obey his voice come to life again: "It is God who does it!" And if we truly listen to this voice, which would wish in humility to devalue the greatness and the merit of the work generated by him, we witness not a devaluation, but a glorification, because we can conclude: therefore the work of Don Guanella is the work of God! And if it is the work of God, it is wonderful, it is beneficial, it is holy. Joy grows in us; but at the same time a problem is born, a great and delicate problem, the memory of which will follow us in the future, thinking precisely of the Blessed, whom we have raised to the altars: the problem of divine action, the problem of Providence, in combination with human action.

Does Providence exist? And how does it intervene in our affairs? Must we leave them free course without thinking of giving them a meaning and then wait at the end to see if some design emerges, unknown to us in this life and revealed only in the future life? And what attitude must therefore be maintained before this imponderable divine action in the field of our life: one of passive and fatalistic resignation, which cares neither for what God does, nor for what we must do in relation to Him? Or must we assume an attitude of continual reference of our actions to the will of God, so that they result, under different but converging aspects, all of God and all our own? Undoubtedly it is this second attitude that we must adopt; it is the attitude that aims to make us, as St. Paul says, "collaborators with God" (1 Cor. 3:9). To collaborate with God should be the program of our life. And it is the program of the Saints.

This is demonstrated to us, among others, by our Don Guanella, thus allowing us to discover in his soul and in his work the guiding lines that define them. We shall see the properly religious line as the master line: everything is done to interpret, to carry out, to honor the will of God.

A great piety, an assiduous prayer, an effort of continual communion with God sustains all the activity of the man of God: one might say that he thinks of nothing but this. And then a great humility penetrates every purpose and every labor of his: it could be a great temptation for one who accomplishes great undertakings to believe himself capable; to call himself self-sufficient, to attribute to himself the merit of his own works; the religious sense instead that informs them prevents such dangerous folly, and infuses into the faithful servant two other spiritual movements, which seem contrary to each other, and are instead corresponding and concurrent: one is the movement of tension, the other of relaxation. Of voluntary tension the first: if we are at the service of God no effort must cost us anything; and it is this that we most succeed in admiring in the laborer of the kingdom of God: tenacity, energy, courage, the spirit of heroism and of sacrifice. Of confident relaxation the other: if we are at the service of God nothing must make us afraid, trust is our true strength, the assurance - even to the point of risk, sometimes! - that the assistance of the Lord, Providence, as we say, will not fail: this strong, positive, loving trust is less visible to the profane observer; but in the soul of the saint it is the principal element of his fortitude and of his greatness.

And then it is easier to understand how a spirit, thus structured interiorly, leaps with formidable audacity to the accomplishment of the newest and most arduous works of mercy; let us recall the teaching of the apostle St. James: "Religion pure and undefiled is this: to visit orphans and widows in their tribulation" (Jas 1:27).

From the religious psychology, to which we have referred, springs the prodigious activity of the servant of God; from the charity that unites him to God derives the charity that renders him a prodigious benefactor of his needy brothers. The social aspect of the Blessed would merit here its true panegyric; but this is done by his sons and his admirers; they do it, with the eloquence of facts and figures, his works. For Us now it suffices to gather the first thread of all this marvelous history of charity operating in mercy; and to find it, that thread, knotted at its point of departure, as at the source of the supernatural energies that run through it all: "It is God who does it!" Is it not beautiful? Is it not wonderful?

Let us therefore praise God in his servant the Blessed Luigi Guanella; and let us pray him that through the intercession of this champion of faith and charity he may give us the grace to imitate him and thus bless us all.