POSSIBILITY TO PURCHASE IT BY SENDING AN EMAIL TO: centro.comunicazione@guanelliani.it
Author: Pino Venerito, Franca Vendramin
Publisher: New Frontier Publisher
Pages: 126
Price: 5,00€
ISBN: 9788875010874
Place: Rome
Year: 2011
Review
Among the various initiatives undertaken during the journey in preparation for the canonization of Don Luigi Guanella, the publication of this Portrait of a Saint also stands out.
The text, edited by the heads of the Spirituality Area, in collaboration with other friends who have given useful advice and suggestions, is meant to be - as the postulator Don Mario Carrera underlines in the presentation - "an attempt to read the passages that the Founder has on the paths of evangelical holiness and a proposal for ways of reflection to stimulate our modern sensibility to cultivate seeds of eternity for our time".
In a study and planning meeting (Rome, 6 September 2010) which was also attended by the Bishop of Como, mgr. Diego Coletti, the Committee had identified, among the many that embellish the multifaceted figure of our Founder, those aspects that make his charisma and his spirituality shine with topicality and prophecy in the contemporary world.
In the elaboration of this text reference was therefore made to these aspects to present the testimony and message of Don Guanella: Man of God - Father of the poor - Citizen of the world - Passionate educator.
With brief hints and significant episodes we have tried to describe the coordinates of his holiness, with the conviction that he cannot be betrayed by relegating his charism and mission to a library shelf, but that they must be incarnated in our time, may they become an extension of him in us: we too are saints like him!
It is always Don Carrera who claims: "Don Luigi Guanella is certainly not a niche saint, but a street priest who challenges us and challenges us to be attentive also to the fragments of goodness present in each of those we meet, because those fragments , enabled by divine grace and cared for with patient and loving solicitude, can prove useful in transforming people into a cathedral of God".
Mons. Diego Coletti, who edited the preface entitled "Don Guanella, son of the Como Church", stimulates and helps the reader to immediately place himself before the figure of the Founder, offering a punctual and rich synthesis of the most expressive traits of his humanity and holiness.
"Don Guanella had a sensitivity that led him to develop acute and brilliant responses to situations of difficulty and discomfort ... he was a man of extremely fine intelligence and multiple interests, with the ability to inflame hundreds of collaborators and cooperators with his enthusiasm ... a man humble, who knew how to listen to those at his side (think of Blessed Chiara Bosatta and Sister Marcellina) ... a very modern man who does not know the ends of the world: it is significant that the miracle that led to his canonization took place in the United States" .
Then the bishop exhorts: “Let us look to him: to his example, to his capacity for prayer, listening, contemplation; to him to entrust oneself completely to God in the centrality of the Eucharist, to his Marian devotion ”.
The authors wanted to coin, in the title of the text, a characteristic expression with which don Guanella was often called and as he himself also liked to define himself - the mountain priest - with another expression that reveals the original seal of his holiness - father of poor-.
It is believed that a few lines are sufficient for the reader to grasp the essentiality of the Portrait and the attractive force of the living testimony of the Saint which does not end with death, on the contrary it becomes even more luminous because it possesses the inextinguishable color of love.
"We remember the humble priest, the mountain priest, as someone still likes to call him, one would not know if more to characterize his evangelical simplicity or rather his adamantine temper [...] he looked at Heaven and smiled at the earth, a singular type of 'ascetic and apostle ...
The poor mountain priest, as he liked to call himself, bitterly opposed when he was young, full of ardor for the dreamed apostolate of winning many souls to God, relieving their temporal miseries, as soon as his work began to bear fruit , was loved, well-liked by the Superiors, Parish Priests, Bishops, and even by the Supreme Pontiffs.”
(cf. in the biography of d. Mazzucchi, p.55; La Divina Provvidenza, 1915)