During his trip to England, Benedict XVI met with students from Catholic schools; in greeting these young people he recalled the great dignity of every baptized person. The Pope said that «it is not often that the Pope of Rome has the opportunity to speak simultaneously to students from all the Catholic schools of England, Wales and Scotland. And since I now have this possibility there is something that really interests me and I want to tell you. I have the hope that among you, who are here listening to me today, there are some of the future saints of the 21st century. The thing that God desires most for each of you is for you to become saints. He loves you much more than you can imagine and he wants the most for you. And the best thing of all for you by far is growing in holiness. Maybe some of you have never thought about this before. Maybe some think that being a saint is not for them… when I invite you to become a saint, I am asking you not to settle for second best. I am asking you not to pursue a limited goal and ignore all others. Having money makes it possible to be generous and do good in the world, but, on its own, it is not enough to make us happy." In every person's life there is a pole of attraction that characterizes them. For the Saint the force of gravity is love, "every man weighs where he loves". Saint Augustine already said: «you are what you love. Do you love God? You assimilate yourself to Him. Do you love the earth? You are the earth." Maybe we never think about the effort of being mediocre and the joy of being saints. One day I found it written that holiness is like being in flight: if you fly low, a few meters from the ground, there are many chances of colliding, if you fly up, there are fewer chances of encountering obstacles.
Don Guanella had the instinct to fly high in his DNA. From the day of his first communion his soul is called to fly high, the future has become present; the multitude of poor people that his heart and hands would help were before his eyes as a child. The light of Jesus, present for the first time in his heart, makes a crowd of eyes shine, eager for a caress and a piece of bread.
Don Guanella recounts in his autobiography that on the day of his first communion he went to seek solitude on the Gualdera hill and on that day, in the warm spring sun, he only gathered to pray. «I lay down on the Gualdera rock, determined to remain there for a long time in prayer and reading. Meanwhile in my heart there was a landscape of sweet sweetness almost of paradise that persuaded me to make great and strong intentions for good, it lasted for a few minutes but left its memory intact until I was seventy years old, it is a sweet comfort and a memory which I would like to perpetuate in stone." That dream, that memory, that vision are now immortalized in a monument in which the Virgin appears to little Louis indicating the future paths of her life in service of the poor.
Cardinal Ratzinger in a long interview a few years ago said that «reforms do not derive from assemblies or synods... but from convincing personalities who we can call Saints».
