by Concetta Desando

"You will always have the poor with you." Jesus had warned us. Today as yesterday, poverty still affects a significant portion of the world. And you don't need to go far, to Africa or India, to the so-called Third World countries: sometimes you just turn the corner and you find them in front of you, the poor. Or just lower your gaze right there, where we avoid resting our eyes because we are distracted or annoyed by the "indecent spectacle": the beggar who reaches out his hand on the sidewalk or the barefoot children who enter the subway are certainly not things for us "busy people", too busy in the daily tom tam to pay attention to certain things. Not to mention the hundreds, thousands, of refugees who flee from poor and war-torn lands seeking refuge on our coasts.

If then to this material dimension of poverty, we add a new one, one suitable for us modern people, people poor in values, in feelings, in the ability to wonder every day, then the matter becomes even more complicated. Everyone has their small and large poverty
If he were still with us, Don Luigi Guanella, the father of the poor, would certainly not find a better world than that of his time. But his work would remain unchanged: because his passion for the poor was closely linked to his passion for God. Serving his brothers who lived in a condition of hardship was not for him a simple act of charity. In his great heart, he was deeply convinced that man is the work of God, and that serving the poor was a desire of God himself even before his own personal life project. Carrying out the Father's will was a vital need for him, almost like breathing.
Don Guanella's entire path towards holiness lies in welcoming the poor and in the mission of charity. “As often as you did this to one of the least of these brothers, you did it to me”: he had made these words of Christ the pillar of his life. He was able to interpret the needs of the poor from all angles, from bottom to top. In addition to the material need of a piece of bread, he also satisfied the spiritual one with faith: "Bread and Lord must not be little, but enough in every house" he often said, meaning by this that man needs bread, of a roof, of a dress, but also of God.
With this attitude, today Don Guanella would shake the conscience of those who feel at peace with themselves because they give two coins to the beggar on the street or a handful of change during the offertory of the mass. Sure, nice gesture. But it's not enough. Don Guanella's mission among the poor passed through the teaching of Jesus: "I have come so that you may have life, and this in superabundance". The piece of bread, therefore, is not enough: for him it was necessary that life, even in its poorest manifestation, be preserved from any type of material and ideological aggression. The poor need material, spiritual, physical and psychological help. And so he worked to build communities around the little ones. He called them "treasures", because in them he saw Jesus: a heart that he loves cannot help but be attracted to the suffering, the sick, the abandoned, the destitute, those marked by lack of beauty. For money and success, to achieve which today we all launch ourselves in a wild race, Don Guanella replaces the outcasts, because only in them can we still see the stigmata of Jesus Crucified. It is no coincidence that John Paul II defined the charity of the Guanellians as "heroic", because "to discover the beauty beneath the lack of him, beneath his opposite, a particularly acute and unique charity is necessary".
Not only. Don Guanella proposes that today's man look at the poor as "masters". It is precisely in the one who lacks everything that the prophecy about man and human dignity is fulfilled: although devoid of wealth, health, esteem, beauty, intelligence, culture, the human being is dear and precious before God. Today he is a teaching that would sound more or less like this: people are worth what they are, not what they produce. And, in this sense, Don Guanella invites men of all times to let themselves be educated by the poor, the only ones who help us understand the message of God who has chosen to be on the side of the weak and the small.
He had a particular predilection for what he called the "good children", the mentally disabled. In them he saw creatures who needed everything and took on the responsibility of assisting them, taking care of them, helping them even with their basic needs. An attitude that was not just pity and charity, but a great, profound love towards man.
Don Guanella was certainly not against wealth but he invited the fortunate to dialogue with the less fortunate: he was firmly convinced that, even with a disability, if a person feels loved and has their dignity as a human being recognized, they can get up and make sense. to your life. Today the Guanellian message is increasingly relevant. “Millions of children are condemned to early death, more must be done to defeat hunger”: Benedict XVI's appeal to the FAO is a confirmation of today's poor. Poor in everything, dying for a denied piece of bread. “International institutions - the Pope warned, analyzing the causes of the poverty of millions of people - are called to operate consistently with their mandate to support the values ​​of human dignity”. “The crisis that now affects all aspects of economic and social reality, Ratzinger recalled, requires “every effort to help eliminate poverty, the first step to free millions of men, women and children who lack daily bread from hunger”. But if you don't look at the causes, the Pope reflected, you won't get far. If we do not act against the "selfish attitudes which, starting from the heart of man, manifest themselves in his social actions, in economic exchanges, in market conditions, in the lack of access to food, and translate into the denial of the primary right of every person to feed themselves and therefore to be free from hunger, one does not even notice the fact that food has become the object of speculation, or is linked to the trends of a financial market which, devoid of certain rules and poor in moral principles, appears anchored to the sole objective of profit".
It is said that Don Guanella is a letter that God sent to the poor. That letter is still in the mailbox of each of us.