Make the embrace perceived as that of God
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Don Guanella: memory as legacy
by Fabio Pallotta
It is us and not others, born just over a hundred years ago. A man and his human adventure are at the origin of our existence: Don Luigi Guanella. The dream of God and the dream of Don Guanella as a child who, having made his First Communion, lay down on the Motto del Vento in Gualdera and glimpsed his path, have embraced and the seventy-year-old perceives that his projections as a boy, as a young priest, as adults and elderly people they went towards the dreams that the Father has for this land of ours.
Don Guanella invites us to the center of his spirituality
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The request of spiritual life: "Lord, teach us to pray"
by Angelo Forti
After months of training, dialogue and community recitation of the psalms, the cry of the apostles explodes: "Lord, teach us to pray". The disciples did not ask for prayer formulas, they begged to be taught the "heart" of prayer, the path that leads before God. In the prayer of the "Our Father" Jesus opens the door onto the panorama of God. Praying is not convincing God gives us something, but it is a dive into the ocean of his mercy and feeling that, as it says in the first line of the book of Genesis, the same Spirit hovers over those waters to fertilize our lives.
Happy birthday, Don Luigi!
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by Angelo Forti
December 19, 1842
In God's dreams there are no suburbs and before Him no one remains an orphan. Over time he lets poor men and women live in the camps, capable of sowing love and solidarity among the wounds of marginalization. The birth of Don Guanella is the sign of God's attention for his children.
It's always nice to browse through the family photo album. Those pages seem to emanate the fragrance of memories and awaken pleasant reminiscences in our memory. The more expressive and distant in time the photo is, the more joy it brings to the soul.
This happens for the birthday of our Founder Luigi Guanella.
It was December 19th 171 years ago. Fraciscio was covered in snow and already in the poor houses the children were waiting to prepare the nativity scene.
A few days before Christmas, the Guanella family celebrates another birth. Maria Guanella gives birth to her ninth child. In Fraciscio, there were few families, but many births. The day after the birth, Father Lorenzo wraps this bundle of flesh in a warm sheepskin and carries him to the baptismal font so that he can immediately breathe with the very breath of God.