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by Salvatore Alletto

Precisely in the days in which we remember the 154th anniversary of the priestly ordination of Don Guanella (26 May 1866) the world seems to be experiencing a time of emergency and suspension. An imperceptible enemy scares humanity, forces it to stay distant and closed at home, waiting for better times. A situation never experienced before by this generation. Even the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries, the centuries in which Don Luigi lived, saw some successive epidemics: cholera on several occasions and the so-called "Spanish flu". Don Guanella had the experience, even if it seems not exactly direct, of the cholera epidemic. When instead,  the Spanish flu hit the whole world between 1918 and 1920 causing the death of tens of millions of people in conjunction with the First World War, our Don Luigi had ascended to Heaven a few years ago.

Don Guanella was certainly not the type to lose heart and in his heart there was the memory of what Don Bosco did in the summer of 1854 when he gathered 44 young people to help the sick by interceding with the Lord for their health and salvation in exchange for promise of purity of life. Perhaps it was precisely thinking of the Turin Saint who, together with the first nuns of Pianello, in 1884, as we read in The Ways of Providence, trembled with desire to give support to the cholera sufferers of Naples: «We go among the cholera patients of Naples to work or die ». The Archbishop at the time refused help. 

But this desire to put oneself at service during emergencies and moments of profound crisis characterized Don Guanella until the end of his life. In 1915, in fact, he was among the earthquake victims of Avezzano nella Marsica who supported him after yet another rejected attempt, namely that of the Messina earthquake of 1908.

"We can't finish it as long as there are poor people to hospitalize and needy people to provide for." So what would Don Guanella do today? He would certainly struggle a lot to maintain social distancing, perhaps precisely towards his good children and his elderly, categories very affected by this pandemic. Certainly he would be on the front line to help those in need with a hot dish or something to feed themselves.

It would certainly encourage us to use all means of communication, not to make noise, but to strengthen that bond of charity and communion that has always linked our homes and communities to each other, but also to those who are far away.

He would bend his knees in prayer and adoration, praying the Rosary and the Chaplet of Providence. Every day she would invoke Saint Joseph, patron saint of the dying, so that the victims of the Coronavirus pandemic can quickly cross the finish line of Heaven.  

Not only that, he would organize Hope and the aftermath, leveraging his creative and imaginative charity demonstrated since he was a boy, when he suggested to his father to channel the waters of a mountain spring to lift the population. Trying to imagine what he would have done helps us think about what we, priests and people of God, should do as we journey towards new heavens and a new earth.