If we can ask to borrow solemn words even for small things we must shout: «Gaudium magnum nuntiamus vobis: Don Guanella will be canonized on 23 October 2011».
On that day the Holy Father Benedict XVI, with a solemn act of his magisterium, will award Don Guanella with the degree in sanctity, with the specialization of researcher of the face of God and expert in humanity, fragile and suffering.
Don Guanella is a champion of successful humanity. Holiness is a word that instills fear, we believe it is worthy only of privileged people, marked by a noble destiny, however, for the Christian it is the goal of his existence. An ancient philosopher, Plato, said that «We can forgive a child who is afraid of the dark.
The true tragedy of life is when a man is afraid of the light." When we think that holiness concerns others, we are like those who are afraid of the light. On the day of baptism we are born saints. That day is only the dawn of a journey destined to live in the splendor of light which reaches its maximum brightness in the practice of the Christian virtues of faith, hope and charity towards God and towards brothers.
The Church has always represented saints with a halo, a light that frames the saint's face: his interiority and spiritual richness emerge as light. Jesus stated in the gospel: "You are the light of the world." I like to compare a saint to oil or wax which, when struck by a spark, transforms into light. The life of a saint is a radical consecration to love, as it is for wax: it is entirely available at the service of the flame and, being consumed in the flame, spreads the light.
The worlds darkened by materialism, sucked in by earthly goods and prisoners of spiritual darkness await the light of testimony to illuminate those fragments of the divine enclosed in indifference. In these brothers and sisters, orphans of supernatural hope, God himself awaits the credible and transparent testimony of men and women of faith.
Don Guanella did not think he could reach the heights of holiness and occupy the limelight of the universal Church for a while, but he believed in his possibility of becoming a saint and allowed himself to be shaped by God, aware that his works of charity they flourished in his hands moved by the great and only Artist in the history of sanctity: God. In fact, his refrain was: «It is not me, but it is God who does».
The celebration of the canonization should not be a solemn and moving placing of Don Guanella in a niche with many lit lights, but the joy of feeling his presence where men suffer, hope, pray, work to build a world inhabitable even by the poor.
We can read next to it an imaginary but very realistic letter of what Don Guanella would like us to do.