Important tool of knowledge,
Guanellian Pages, n. 3 of the historiographical magazine, edited by the Guanellian Studies Center

A famous saying rightly states that history is not made with se or with ma. What constitutes it in a solid way, with certainty and linearity, are not unusual hypotheses or positions taken, but the patience of research, the humility to advance in small steps, the willingness to compare. The interpretations of more or less major events of the past, the judgment on significant figures, the understanding of changes over time are points of arrival reached with complex work and shared reflection, within a common cultural heritage.

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edited by Gabriele Cantaluppi

The month of June is traditionally dedicated to devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, also because it is the month in which the liturgical feast is celebrated, on Friday eight days after the feast of the Corpus Christi.

Devotion to the Heart of Jesus had a great increase thanks to the revelations received from Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, in the seventeenth century, and to the apostolate of the Jesuits and managed to establish itself against the opposition of the Jansenist current.

The object of worship is the physical Heart of Jesus. Pius XII in the encyclical You will draw the waters teaches that «in the devotion to the Heart of Jesus it is his divine Person who is adored, his Person who has assumed a human nature and therefore also a human heart. Whoever loved with that Heart was not a human person, but a divine one".

With his usual clarity, St. Thomas Aquinas affirmed that «to adore the humanity of Christ is the same as to adore the Incarnate Word of God, as to honor the robe of a king is to honor the king who wears it. From this point of view, the cult rendered to humanity by Christ is a cult of adoration".

According to Pius XI, devotion to the Heart of Jesus is «the whole substance of religion and especially the norm of a more perfect life, as that which guides minds by an easier way to know Jesus Christ intimately and induces hearts to love him more ardently and more generously to imitate him" (Encyclical Most merciful God, May 8, 1928).

Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, thus presented the association of the Apostleship of Prayer, linked to the cult of the Sacred Heart: «Many simple people can find in the Apostleship of Prayer help to live Christianity in an authentic way. It reminds us of St. Paul's invitation: “I therefore urge you, brothers, by the mercy of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God; this is your spiritual worship”» (Rom 12:1).

With regard to the practice of the nine first Fridays of the month, the Directory on popular piety and liturgy of the Vatican dicastery for divine worship and the discipline of the sacraments writes: 

«In our time the devotion of the first Fridays of the month, if practiced in a correct pastoral way, can still bear undoubted spiritual fruits. However, it is necessary that the faithful be properly educated". 

With his unconditional promise of mercy, Jesus wanted to induce us to place all our confidence in him, making himself the guarantor of our salvation through the merits of his most loving Heart. 

However, it does not in any way favor the presumption of being saved on the cheap: sincerely devout souls know very well that no one can be saved without their own free correspondence to God's grace, as summarized by Saint Augustine: «Whoever created you without you , will not save you without you."

Paul VI in the document Searchable riches of Christ, of February 6, 1969, on the occasion of the bicentenary of the establishment of the liturgical feast of the Sacred Heart, indicated the point of arrival of this devotion: «…through a more intense participation in the Sacrament of the altar, may the Heart of Jesus, whose greatest gift is precisely the Eucharist», the greatest love in which all the loves of Jesus for us are summed up.  

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Soon we will remember the five years since the death of Don Mimì.

To remember his great love for Don Guanella, we publish an article of his on the Founder in which some characteristic notes of the Founder's spirituality stand out

The Fatherhood of God

In this regard, the magnificent intuitions that the Founder lived and handed us about the Fatherhood of God in the gift of filial election with which He loved us and decided to create us immediately abound: we are, not only creatures of God for the fact that He brought us out of nothing and gave us existence; but we were elected with a free choice of love to be his "children". 

He thought of us and wanted us as participants in the Sonship of his eternal Only Begotten. Therefore he sent the eternal Word into the world to become "Word Incarnate", so that he would be among us the Firstborn among many brothers and we his younger brothers. (The Heavenly Father's Firstborn is the Eternal Word, who in the fullness of time took human flesh from Mary, your sister although immaculate. Then the Incarnate Word which is Jesus Christ became your true brother. Jesus your eldest brother, because he is the only Son of 'Eternal, he was sent by the Eternal himself to find you, who, worse than the prodigal son, had fled far away from the Father's house" (Andiamo al Padre, chap. I, in Opera omnia, vol. III, p.)

With eternal love I loved you

The astonishment aroused in him by the ineffable infinity of the love with which God has willed us, created us, saved us in his Son reappears like a refrain in the Founder's writings. Use the term "excess of love" to mean the absolute gratuity of God's creative and saving action: 

«The Lord shows himself to you as a most tender friend. In an excess of love he created you out of nothing. In an excess of love he made that great journey from heaven to earth and from the land of Jerusalem to that of the summit of Calvary to save you.' (L. Guanella, In sacred time, Opera Omnia, vol. I, page 855.)

«To love you, he didn't wait for you to come before him. A father loves his son when he knows he is on his way to get there. The Lord from eternal ages saw you coming, and from eternity he began to love you with tenderest affection. (Idem, In the month of fervour, Opera omnia, vol I, p. 1158.)

The language of love emerges as the main category in all the thought, life and work of our Founder. Only in its light can something of our relationship with God be truly understood. And the supreme seal of authenticity and oath of how sincere and definitive God's love is for us is the fact that

"So God loved the world that he gave his only Son for it." (Idem, In the month of fervour, Opera omnia, vol. , page 1159.)

What more could he have done to announce it to you?

Divine Providence

Of equal consistency should be considered the theme of "Divine Providence", which anticipates, accompanies, prepares and continually guides man's journey from his beginning to his last breath. 

God is the alpha and omega of history: the destiny of the world, of the Church and of peoples, as well as the threads of each man's history are firmly in his hands. Hands and heart of the Father, who combines in full harmony merciful goodness together with omnipotent wisdom, tenderness together with the effectiveness of his will.

Above all, the Founder was fascinated by the merciful nature of divine Providence: it is the providence of a father, of maternal, assiduous, hidden tenderness, which never lets itself be discouraged even by the worst ungratefulness. This goodness of Providence is described by the Founder with a great variety of images, drawn above all from his experience as a child within the family, in an affectionate relationship with his father and mother, then elevated to meanings of affection, closeness, promotion and joy from part of God towards each of us:

- God delights in observing the reflection of similarity between the face of the son with his own face (Andiamo al Padre, Ibid., p. 446s)

- follows the heartbeats of the son (446s)

- God playing with his little son (111) 

- cannot be long without his children (108)

- who provides daily bread for his children

In his story as a man and as a founder, the presence of Providence becomes a fact, which can also be immediately ascertained through the things that happen in the daily experience of charitable activities with his poor people. 

In addition, his whole human adventure is illuminated in this light, since he was a child, for which he can entitle his memoirs: "The ways of Providence". The Holy Father Paul VI summarized Don Guanella's spirituality and message for us and for the Church today with the very affirmation with which the Blessed recognized the action of God in his life and in his works: "It is God, what is he doing!».

Drawing of love: Servants of (from) Charity

A last theme, which involves the entirety of the Founder's charism: God's Design springing from eternal love and permeated entirely by charity.

Don Luigi, without delaying in treating it as a textbook, often delights in recalling this vision of faith in love with which he looks at the Church, the world, life, the poor, the present, the future. He gave us as a name a title that contains a whole theology of identity, mission and a whole programme: «Congregatio Servorum a Charitate». 

Note particularly that reference to Charity: it does not say that we are servants of charity, even if we write it with a capital letter. Rather we are servants originating from Charity, starting from Charity; it wants to highlight the source, the spring from which we flowed and, naturally, whose face and instances we bear. Our service to the poor takes place as a necessary expansion of the charity with which the heart is enlivened. 

The world exists for love. There is no other reason, neither of origin, nor of end, nor of way of salvation. «The world will be saved in Charity», he wrote in 1910 in "La Divina Provvidenza". (L. Guanella, Apostolato di carità, in La Divina Provvidenza 17 (1910), pp. 92-94. Another page of profound charismatic inspiration is that of the Regulation of the Servants of Charity 1910, chapter I, § 2, in Opera omnia, IV, p. 1232ss.)

CONCLUSION

I close these reflections by inviting you to read a few pages of "The ways of Providence" and even more to rise with interior joy to the contemplation of the great mystery of our personal existence, letting yourself be guided by the splendid words of Sacred Scripture (Psalm 8):

"O Lord our God,

how big is your name on all the earth:

your magnificence rises above the skies…

If I look at your sky, work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars you have stared at,

what is man because you remember

and the son of man why do you care?...

O Lord our God,

how great is your name in all the earth!"

(Don Domenico Saginario)