Brother Pietro Osmetti's path to holiness
With Don Guanella
Peter felt strongly the Lord's call, but he didn't know what exactly he had to do. He was thinking about religious life, but where and with whom? Providence wanted a very dear friend of his, a certain Giuseppe Trinca, to be found in the same search. Now Trinca's sister, named Orsola, like Pietro's mother, after raising her brother to replace her mother who died prematurely, felt strongly her vocation to become a religious in order to devote herself totally to God.
Having talked about it with the parish priest, in 1893 he sent her to Como to don Guanella, by then known in the Diocese as the Apostle of charity and who had started, even if not yet in a formal way, two Congregations: one for girls and one for the youth. Ursula was accepted. But Giuseppe also went to accompany his sister to Don Guanella and with him our Pietro and another young man. Don Guanella accepted them all and so on the morning of December 10, the Feast of the Holy House of Loreto, Pietro and his two companions left Grosotto definitively to serve Jesus in the person of the poor with Don Luigi Guanella.
At the time of Osmetti, the Casa don Guanella was a Noah's ark that opened its doors to all sorts of shipwrecked people. Don Guanella's "clinical" eye immediately identified the right place for Peter: among the sick old men to heal his body and spirit wounds.
He made his first profession on March 17, 1898 and perpetuated it on April 5, 1908, a few days after the first perpetual profession in the history of the Congregation, made by Fr Guanella with his first confreres on March 24, 1908.
The nurse of the poor
And so the young farmer, who grew up in the free air of the fields, first became a good waiter for the poor and then a valid and diligent nurse. Those who lived with him testify that he had a good word for everyone, with great patience and charity, always with a smile on his lips, attentive in his service and available to everyone. Night and day is between them. There is no shortage, as always happens, of ingratitudes and even insults, but he doesn't seem to notice, indeed he reciprocates with new and more exquisite attentions and proofs of love.
In this work, or rather mission, which lasts until death, he completes his journey towards the goal of holiness. Strength is drawn from mainly Eucharistic prayer, as Don Guanella invited us to do. He prayed, he himself says, as a son prays to his father. Even during his work he never ceased to turn his mind and ejaculations to the Father of all good, Providence for him and for his poor old men.
Nor with less fervor did he address the Blessed Virgin to whom he felt indebted for his "conversion" and the heavenly Mother responded with ever more abundant and new favours.
Love for God and for the Virgin became zeal for charity and apostolate throughout his life. Peter was zealous for the honor of the Lord in the souls of his old and infirm ones, while he cared for their bodies and healed their wounds with maternal delicacy. He spent hours and hours in the infirmary assisting his patients.
Don Guanella taught in omnibus charitas and Pietro followed this invitation of the Founder to perfection. It was always everything for the others. He used to repeat.” We are not here for ourselves, but we are here for these poor people! ... ”and this until the end of his days.
Sunset
After 70, the ailments worsened rather rapidly until he was forced to bed throughout the winter of 1940-41. The bed became a true altar of piety and immolation; true teaching chair with the example and with the simple and sublime word.
He lived and died for the Congregation. And yet, even in those moments of serious illness, she never ceased to think of others.
Sick, he never ceased to be a nurse, so much so that he often brought aid to the room neighbor who was certainly no worse off than him...
The illness had ups and downs, as often happens in these cases, there was also a small recovery and Pietro resumed his job, but it didn't last long... he went back to bed so as not to get up again.
On December 27, 1943, around 23 pm, his beautiful and holy soul united with the Founder and with the various confreres who had already preceded him in Heaven.