Homily on the Feast of St. Luigi Guanella, Como, October 24, 2025
by Monsignor Ivan Salvadori
LThe liturgical feast of Saint Luigi Guanella annually presents us with the great Gospel fresco of the Last Judgment (Matthew 25:31-40), which portrays the Lord separating the good from the wicked. In this Gospel passage, the Son of Man is no longer the child born into poverty, nor the condemned man who suffers and dies on the cross. Naturally, he continues to be the Son of Man, who became like us, but he is also—at the same time—the King of glory and the Judge of the nations.
2. The first striking thing about this scene is that there are only two camps: the good and the bad; those who stand at the Lord's right hand, and in whom he recognizes himself, and those—on the contrary—who know they are cursed. It is an "either/or" that frightens us if, before this scene, we remember our many compromises and mediocrities in life. Yet, before the King of glory, all compromises and subtle inventions of our spirit prove useless. Moreover, this "sorting" between the good and the bad happens so suddenly that there is no longer time for repentance. Here, in fact, it is no longer we who judge, but the Lord and his Word who, revealing the secrets of the heart, weigh and judge.
3. This page helps us remember that we are all on the path to Heaven, and that this very gaze toward heaven must be the criterion for evaluating all our actions. It is here that the motto "Bread and Heaven" is rooted, with which we usually summarize the life and work of Don Guanella. At first glance at his actions, we might say that he was concerned first and foremost with giving bread to the poor, and then showing them the path to Heaven. However, if we delve deeper into the spirituality of this great saint, we realize that we should rather say the opposite: precisely because he wanted to reach out to Heaven—and he knew that we will all be judged on charity—he distributed bread abundantly to the poor, reaching out to everyone with the same charity as the Good Shepherd. It was his gaze on Heaven that drove him to give bread to the poor, recognizing in them the suffering face of Christ: "I was hungry and you gave me food" (Mt 25:35).
4. The scene of the Last Judgment inspires fear, but it consoles us to know that if we embrace the Gospel, if we accept its commandments and instructions, then we can begin now to establish a kind of self-judgment that prepares us for the Last Judgment. This opportunity is also given to us every time we examine our conscience, prepare for confession, listen—in the silence of prayer—to what our conscience reminds us and reproaches us. Not only that. In this Jubilee Year, drawing on the merits of the saints and the great treasure they have accumulated, the Church also grants us the grace of indulgence.
5. Let us return to the Gospel and take a closer look at the great multitude of the saved. They are those who—seated at the right—hear the Lord say to them: "I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me" (Mt 24:34-36). We must not fail to notice the amazement of the righteous. They know they are sinners. They cannot deny that what they have done is too little compared to the Passion of Christ. For this reason, they are amazed and, faced with the eternity that has burst into their lives, they ask when it began. Finally, they discover, in wonder, that in the hungry and the thirsty, in strangers and the poor, in the sick and the imprisoned, the Lord has come to meet them. He has judged them worthy of his visit.
6. Saint Luigi Guanella knew only too well that the Lord makes himself present in the little ones. At the beginning of 1905, when his works were well established and with them came endless difficulties, he recommended Eucharistic adoration to the directors of his houses, as well as care for the poor. He wrote: "[Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament] is the true, faithful friend who does not betray us and can answer our prayers. He will support us, encourage us, make our steps and actions useful, our life and our death precious." And he added: "And when we cannot go to Jesus in church, let us seek him in his poor people [...] and we, like his saints, will one day hear: 'Because you have loved my poor, come to my right hand.'" Saint Luigi Guanella had profoundly understood that, if in the Eucharist the Lord makes himself present in his true body, the poor too are, in a certain sense, a sacrament of his presence. To be treated with care, like the Eucharist.
7. But let us return to the Gospel for the last time to finally consider the group of the damned who, as the scene unfolds, take second place. They are those who did not recognize the Lord, and now it is he who does not recognize them. He had visited them too in the poor and the suffering, but they did not welcome him. Now, however, he reveals himself, makes himself known: he shows them the suffering he has endured and also where they should have recognized him. But they have lived with their eyes closed, they have built a world in which there is no room for the suffering of others. The paradox is that, in order to avoid all suffering, they bring upon themselves the greatest of all sufferings: eternal fire. And what is worse is that they can no longer blame the Lord, but only themselves.
8. Servants of Charity, Daughters of Our Lady of Providence, and Guanellian Cooperators, the Church is grateful to you because through your works you vividly embody the meaning of this Gospel parable. In what you do for the poor, the Guanellian charism is alive and renewed, speaking to everyone in a language everyone understands: the language of love, nourished by small gestures, yet in the certainty that the Lord is present in every small fragment of love.