50th anniversary of priestly ordination of some Guanellians

by Mario Carrera

On May 14 this year, alongside the childish freshness of the children who received the Body and Blood of Jesus for the first time, the Basilica of San Giuseppe hosted a beautiful group of Guanellian priests to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their priestly ordination . 

A robust bunch of "adolescents from heaven" who have been working in the Lord's vineyard for fifty years to offer the wine of joy to many people. Each face has a story, apostolic adventures experienced, still pulsating with lifeblood, on the various continents, with varied tasks on the periphery of the world as well as at the top of Don Guanella's Congregation of the Servants of Charity. Each of the ten priests on this occasion brought the diary of their life to the altar to thank God for the gift of the vocation, but also for the good sown, the tears dried, the feet "washed" of the poor to restore dignity to life. 

“You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you” – said Jesus – to send you on the streets of the world to announce that in heaven there is a Father who loves everyone and, in order not to lose any of his children, he has sent his son. 

With grateful hearts are the parishioners, the Guanellian brothers, the Guanellian nuns represented by Mother General Sister Serena Ciserani, the cooperators, as well as the friends of the Guanellian family who admired that offering of gratitude placed on the altar of the Eucharistic sacrifice; a gift comparable to "a historical era", 500 years "in pieces", sanctified with the evangelical leaven of dedication. Truly, imagining the apostolic work of these ten priests is a source of joy; it is a luminous trail in the company of the poor. Even under different skies, their pastoral action alongside the poor in the darkness of desolation is comparable to the Milky Way or the biblical cloud of fire that accompanied the people of Israel towards the Promised Land. Individually: Don Antonio, Don Giovanni, Don Remigio, Don Antonino, Don Cesare, Don Tonino, Don Battista, Don Piero, Don Giuseppe have illuminated the paths of people in search of the face of God. 

The Superior General, Don Alfonso Crippa, presided over the Eucharistic concelebration and in the homily he touched upon a display of memories and, addressing those celebrating, said: «Certainly each of you today willingly and with great gratitude remembers that day in which you were surrounded by so many people who perhaps are no longer here: your family members who not only led you with joy to the altar, but also accompanied you afterwards and many other people who explicitly but also secretly accompanied you in these many years of your ministry priestly". Don Crippa also expressed gratitude for the feeling of joy of «belonging to our congregation to which you have given all your energies and for which you are still so precious; each with a singular mission but all realizing as a single gift to the Lord and to our poor."

The Superior underlined how the moment of the fiftieth anniversary celebration had been prepared with the constant desire to be generous disciples of Don Guanella's charisma. In fact, those celebrating wanted to begin this pilgrimage of thanksgiving starting from Don Guanella's birthplace, Fraciscio: «Precisely to express your thanks to our holy Founder who was and always wants to be your model of life to continue to give to the Lord and your life to the poor, but certainly also to remember many experiences lived in the years of formation". The Superior concluded his homily with these words: «Certainly today you recognize that you have received much and for this reason your thanks to the Lord also becomes a commitment to give and to give of yourself. My and our wish is precisely that of continuing to live your daily Eucharist with the sanctity of your life and with the commitment to sanctify the people that the Lord entrusts to you."

In this solemn celebration we prayed so that in the world there are men and women capable of governing by living this role not as an exercise of power that crushes, but as a service that helps grow, so that in Christian communities there are pastors capable of showing tenderness and the mercy of the Father; so that the testimony of a totally gratuitous love that goes beyond the limits of the natural family itself, like that of Jesus, through the different forms of consecrated life does not fail... and also to pray so that every Christian rediscovers the meaning of his own life as a vocation , called to be a witness to the Gospel everywhere, like salt and leaven that transforms from within the different realities in which he lives.

But what's the point of praying for all this? First of all, that of putting ourselves in the right position before God, aware of the identity of creatures, of his children, recognizing that the primacy is his, that he is the "master of the harvest", the one who calls and sends, who makes hearts the germ of the vocation. We are his collaborators. It may be that, faced with the famines of our time, we have lowered our gaze in resignation, allowing the invocation to die out within us: "Send workers into your harvest!".