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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)