This is the continuous miracle that can be read in the lowercase "legendary"; this is what Don Guanella knew how to do, he knew how to believe and it remains difficult for us. The unshakable faith in Providence, since it generally uses the hand of men, is the trust in the possible relationship between God and man, it is the certainty that man can reach the light of God and with this see the things of world. It is therefore an act of faith in God and in man: the interventions of material assistance that Don Guanella continually receives and which he seems to await as natural events, are nothing other than the fruit of his faith that God can always reveal himself in man as love for brothers; and that the love of God always lives in man, capable, once freed and activated, of moving mountains.
It seems to me then that we can say that there is not much difference between this "modern legendary" and an ancient one: these are formal aspects and only the signs of the language change.
Once upon a time we spoke to simple and educated people in miraculous terms; today the testimonies of daily life speak, illuminated by the religious vision and the commandment of Charity.
This therefore seems to be the dynamic of a corpus of "acts", and in this the terms of the birth of a "legendary", whether ancient or modern, are also revealed. At the center there is a propulsive element which is the historical figure, capable of moving and activating the memory as a need for a link between time and the eternal, capable of recalling the affectionate quotation, the presence in everyday words, for which , the blessed one, having ascended to heaven, maintains his presence among those who knew him and reveals himself to those who, through him, seek the path to eternity.
In this sense, in a legendary the historical fact, the positive fact are surpassed by the importance of what the witnesses saw: in a certain sense what matters above all is what the Saint was for them, what activated this figure in them to be the intermediary between the their conscience and God.
Our mentality, more scientistic than scientific, runs in search of formulas, data on which to base a very unlikely truth, when it comes to human testimonies. Here everyone remembers his miracle, paying little attention to circumstances and details: a conscience had peace, a life had meaning, a desperation had light; a derelict had love, a hungry man had bread.
The facts narrated here are close to us and therefore are often also provided with circumstances and details, which I have left: such as the names of people and places, so that the testimonies had their original integrity, I did not bother to deny or verify them, this philology seems to me to be foreign to a text of this kind, which aims above all at another fidelity; the image, therefore, of Don Guanella, which is communicated, is not so much in terms of historical data, but of testimony of an encounter that took place on this earth, but also moved beyond this dimension.