Spirituality

Details: Published: 04 December 2025

For ten centuries, Benedictine monks have guarded the image of La Morenita on the mountain of Montserrat and welcomed crowds of pilgrims. The sanctuary has become the center and symbol of Catalonia.

by Don Gabriele Cantaluppi

Fresh from his trip to the Holy Land, Father Guanella explains to his students that a Christian is with Jesus when he recognizes him in faith and receives him in the Eucharist.

Don Bruno Capparoni, Director of the Pious Union

SWhispers of prayers could be heard in Bethlehem on the autumn night of October 13, 1902. A group of Italian pilgrims, priests and laypeople, crowded into the Basilica of the Nativity in the darkness, while the priests prepared for Mass. Among them was Father Guanella, who was participating in the pilgrimage of Italian Catholics to the Holy Land, led by Cardinal Andrea Carlo Ferrari, Archbishop of Milan. Despite the unforgiving hour, Father Guanella wanted to celebrate the Eucharistic sacrifice in the very place where Jesus was born.

Advent, a time of joy as we await the Son of Mary. A time to open our hearts to our children and give them hope. A time to demand peace and justice for all our children.

by Rosanna Virgili

“PFor to us a child is born, to us a son is given" (Is 9:5a). Among the texts that the Church reads in Advent there is also this happy announcement: "to us a child is born." In ancient times, of which Scripture tells us, the birth of a child – especially a male – was a cause of the greatest joy for parents: for the mother, because women found their fulfillment in motherhood, and for the father, who through his son acquired offspring, perpetuating his name and his lineage. The prophet Jeremiah recounts this: "The man who brought my father the good news, 'A male child has been born to you,' filled him with joy" (Jer 20:15). If having a child is a source of joy, not having one is a cause of inconsolable sadness.

Details: Parent Categories: Spirituality; Published: 04 December 2025

by Don Bruno Capparoni, Director of the Pious Union

È The depiction of Saint Anthony of Padua with the Child, reproduced at the beginning of our magazine, is very well known. It is entirely similar to the depiction of Saint Joseph, so dear to us. Both the Franciscan saint and the holy Patriarch hold the Child Jesus in their arms and remind us of what we celebrate every year at Christmas: that the Son of God revealed himself to humanity in the form of a child.

To accompany the depiction of Saint Anthony we have chosen a passage from his Sermon on Christmas, which contains this beautiful phrase: "[Mary] gave birth to her firstborn son. […] Behold, paradise!" A few words in which Saint Anthony expresses what he felt at the vision of the Child: he saw and embraced complete happiness, he embraced paradise. Anthony had gathered near Padua, in Camposampiero, where a nobleman had prepared a small cell for him. He prayed, that is, he practiced the virtue of faith. He received the gift of seeing the Child Jesus with his own eyes, as an extraordinary fulfillment of what ordinarily occurs in every Christian prayer: the encounter with God.

When we celebrate Christmas as Christians, we too are "given paradise." Perhaps we will not enjoy the extraordinary experience of St. Anthony, but ours will be rather like that of Mary, of whom Don Guanella writes: "Most holy Mary does not perceive the divinity that is in the celestial child; and yet she is blessed in believing. What blessedness for the mother of the Savior!" (In the month of flowers, 1884). Our Lady and St. Joseph, when they first glimpsed the newborn God, exclaimed: "Behold, heaven!" But this can also be our humble and grateful exclamation as we celebrate Christmas by embracing Jesus the Savior.

This gaze and this "embrace" we give to Jesus is the true gift of Christmas. A gift to be implored from the Holy Spirit and treasured in prayer and meditation. A gift that justifies and beautifies other gifts, if they are kept in moderation. A most precious gift, which fills us and makes us capable, indeed needy, of practicing charity. A divine gift that in our hands becomes an earthly gift, to be distributed abundantly to those who give us gifts, but also to those who can give us nothing. A gift that makes us willing to use our riches (however many or few) to befriend the poor, in accordance with Jesus' recommendation: "Make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest mammon, so that when it fails, they may welcome you into eternal dwellings."