Don Guanella wrote a pamphlet in 1884 to guide Christians towards devotion to
the Sacred Heart. He infused his spiritual intuitions and his piety into it.
by Don Bruno Capparoni
AIn Don Guanella's time, Christians' desire for prayer was often fueled by devotional practices, but the results of faith and piety were genuine. During the month of June, the "month of the Sacred Heart" par excellence, it was customary to perform dedicated practices of piety each day, and to this end, books were published to accompany the faithful. Don Guanella also wrote one, entitled In the month of fervor, which he published in 1884, while he was parish priest in Pianello del Lario (Como).
The Second Vatican Council appropriately introduced the faithful to a spirituality more inspired by the liturgical year, but even today the month of June retains a strong connection to devotion to the Sacred Heart. Moreover, the connection is almost natural because the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart falls in June (in 2026, it will be June 12th, being a "movable" feast linked to Easter).
It may be helpful to familiarize yourself with the booklet composed by Don Guanella, because in it he conveyed, perhaps more than in his other writings, his spiritual experience and charismatic insights. It must be said that devotion to the Sacred Heart is fundamental to his spiritual makeup, and he is a qualified witness to that "season" of the Church that found a point of identification in this devotion. In the 19th century and until the middle of the 20th, this devotion spread throughout Catholic countries, especially after Pius IX extended its solemnity to the entire Church in 1856.
Don Guanella's booklet is thus offered as an aid to daily reflection and prayer throughout the month, and in its thirty meditations, the author follows the evangelical narrative of Christ's life, from the Annunciation to the Ascension into heaven. Each chapter opens with a biblical quotation from the Old or New Testament, followed by a doctrinal exposition inspired by that maxim and divided into numbered segments. It is followed by an example from the Gospel or the life of a saint, and concludes with a prayer and the reflexes, summary sentences of the content of each segment of the presentation.
Trying to trace the thread of Don Guanella's spiritual thought in the web of his thirty discourses, we find that he has developed, almost imperceptibly, the theological inspiration that underpins his spiritual doctrine, centered on the fatherhood of God. It is as if he were telling us that the profound meaning of devotion to the Sacred Heart is one with God's fatherhood, because the Sacred Heart is the revelation of the Father's love. For Guanella, the condition of a father is the human image that most adequately expresses love. But God's love was revealed to us in Jesus; Jesus' life is entirely a revelation of the Father, and the image that sums it all up is the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
But in explaining this doctrine, Don Guanella is well aware of the abilities of his readers, simple people; for this reason he
transforms catechetical teaching, which could perhaps result in
theoretical and abstract king, in images close to the life experiences of the faithful or arising from the memories of his childhood as a small mountaineer: «The shepherd boy, who from the summit of the Alps guards his flock, looks up at the bell tower of his parish, distinguishes with a penetrating eye the field and his father's house and meanwhile he sobs and exclaims: “My father, when will I see you?”. The son cannot stay away from his father. […] Wretched you if, after having distanced yourself from God the Father with the excess of a grave sin, you never again had hope of seeing the placated face of the Lord again. But God forgives. Consider what a good fatherly heart is that of Jesus, your savior and lord» (XIII day).
Don Guanella finds it necessary to develop the connection between the image of the Heart of Christ and the Eucharist, to which he insistently invites his readers, thus developing the pastoral and anti-Jansenistic intuition inherent in devotion to the Sacred Heart. He is a witness and teacher of that evangelical love which is charity, which must be drawn from the divine source of the Sacrament of the Eucharist: "When the good qualities of a son resemble the excellent qualities of the father's soul, then a union of the most lively affection is formed between the two. [...] This blessed life begins on this earth. Whoever approaches the table of the Lord receives the gift of charity. Through charity, God lives in the heart of man, and the Christian lives from the heart of Jesus" (Day XVI).
The brief prayers at the end of each of the thirty meditations allow us to grasp the climate of faith and contemplation so characteristic of Don Guanella's personal experience, which often leads him to burst out in a cry of loving boldness, as in this prayer: "O Jesus, call me too to you. I desire it, I desire it. It is better to die to come and be with you than to live on this earth in danger of losing you. Call me, call me. May my heart yearn for you, may I die from the longing to possess you, O my Jesus" (Day 5).
May these brief notes help today's readers to approach, possibly in the month of June, this writing by Saint Luigi Guanella, which his most faithful disciple, Don Leo-
nardo Mazzucchi, considered it to be «the most beautiful of his pamphlets» (Charity, 66, July 1939, p. 8).
For those who would like to read it, it is republished in the first volume of the Published and unpublished works by Luigi Guanella, Rome 1992, pp. 1149-1281, as well as in digital edition on line in the IntraText Library (search for: IntraText Guanella).