Our life and holiness have a root not only in the grace with which the Lord forms his saints, but also in the primary images that are engraved in us by examples of holiness and sweetness.  
The sanctity of Don Luigi Guanella draws precisely from this fertile sphere of his childhood, from his Alpine valleys, from his mountain villages, from the poor and fervent churches of the small villages where he took his first steps. His youth developed in that strip of Lombardy, not far from the places of Manzoni's imagination and creativity, higher up, above Sondrio, in Val Chiavenna, towards Spluga and Switzerland, in small hamlets of towns, with poor but hard-working inhabitants, honest, religious, where the family was the heart of affection, of education in religious and civil values. In a beautiful reasoned biography of Don Mario Carrera, postulator of the cause of canonization of our Don Luigi, these Guanellian places are described with enchantment; the saint himself, in his numerous writings, will often return in his memory to the charm of his places. Turbulent years of youth for Italy (1848), with the epic conquests of the boiling Garibaldi movement, with the difficult decisions of Pius IX, the libertarian thought of Mazzini, the strategies of Cavour to bring the 'free Church into a free State', and the formation of the unification of Italy (1861) which marks its 150th anniversary in this very year. Don Guanella will be able to maintain his young life, in great balance, without ever doubting the path that Providence was tracing for him, since his years in the seminary in Como. In moments of uncertainty, of doubt, of obfuscation for his young religious family, Don Luigi, in the silence of contemplation, will return to the valleys, to the meadows, to the mountain farmers where the sense of the concrete, of the natural, of balance is most alive psychological and of a strong and genuine faith.
it is extraordinary to note that in the most difficult periods of the Church, the Holy Spirit often acts with original and prophetic solutions, alternatives to the political process of history: Don Orione, Don Guanella, Cottolengo and later Don Gnocchi, or Mother Teresa of Calcutta, the The Church's vocation in the world is oriented towards 'charity', the love of God towards the least. And in this context, God chooses his prophets of charity.
Less than a century has passed since the death of Don Guanella (1915), which occurred at the dawn of a tragic century for the history of Europe due to the subsequent two world wars: subsequently, the social world, work, family, the educational methods of families: is it possible to find homes and social environments like those in which our saints lived today? The family, marriage, children and their educational growth has been transformed: what lesson then, from the environment of Don Guanella's childhood and youth? What can we propose to our new generations? What vital element can keep us united? In the meantime, the grandiose event of the Second Vatican Council has taken place: here there really are the seeds of a future light of hope, as long as we want to believe in the gift of the Spirit that acted and operated in the Council. The Council observes, in its powerful Constitution Gaudium et Spes: «Provided by the example and prayer of their parents, children... will more easily find the path to a truly human formation, to their own salvation and to true sanctity» (48). The family remains a fundamental point in the educational development of children.
The ways of charity, of solidarity, of attention to the most abandoned of our cities, of welcome, today would be the strongest commitments that would still inflame the ardent soul of Don Guanella: for this reason he is in fact recognized as a saint, because, as a beacon, also today illuminates the suffering of our society, giving the response of gratuitous love, as the saints do in following Jesus.