Also next to Luigi Guanella there is a wise and sensible grandfather. Little Luigi's grandfather was called Tomaso (with just one m!) and lived in the locality of Motta, a cluster of houses, today known for an Alpine house of the Acli, but above all for the famous ski resort of Madesimo.
Tomaso was a man who stood out for his prudent thinking; for those times he had a certain culture and, above all, a profound moral sense that "instilled religious rectitude in his every gesture". Don Guanella often repeated a phrase of his: "In life you must be aware of everything and save your soul."
There is no doubt that his grandfather also left an imprint on little Luigi's childhood. In the souls of children, as on photographic film, acts, feelings and sensations remain engraved which then, for an entire existence, become substance and joy of living.
Throughout life, first experiences constitute points of reference and a source of inspirations and values. «The work of education – the Italian bishops wrote – always takes place within the fundamental relationships of existence; education is effective to the extent that the person is encountered, in the totality of his experiences. The areas of emotional life, work and celebration, human fragility and tradition represent a very useful articulation for reinterpreting the educational commitment, to which they offer stimuli and objectives".
The educational goal of our modern era can be considered identical to that of the tradition in which Don Guanella was born and lived. The faces of honesty, loyalty, sense of justice and openness to spiritual values ​​are identical. The succession of generations and historical changes have certainly modified the incentives, but the soul of the person has remained intact. For the life of little Luigi the source of the freshness of faith was the evening rosary in front of the fireplace, the reading of the "Sacred History" given by his father Lorenzo to the reunited family; for us today the "daily teacher" has become television which ripples the surface without reaching the depth, with the evident danger of increasingly widening the boundaries of solitude.