St. Louis Guanella

Next Sunday Blessed Louis Guanella will be canonised in Rome. It will be the coronation of a life of sacrifice and service in complete faithfulness to God's plan.

Fr. Louis Guanella, in fact had a great zeal for the salvation of souls and for the needs of the poor. But in his lifetime he had to face the persecutions of the State and the indifference and misunderstanding of his Superiors, who meant to protect him and the Church from further troubles.

But in the end his faith and consistence had been rewarded, and the Lord opened the way for his charism to be manifested to the world.

I wish to rejoice with his Sons and Daughters, the Fathers and Sisters who are quite active in many countries (I met them in Italy and in India). I would be happy if my friends had access to the spiritual wealth of this apostle of charity.

Why should I be so interested? St. Louis Guanella is an alumnus of the Gallio College in Como, where he was able to pursue his studies under the guidance of the Somascan Fathers. At that time he was already a seminarian for the diocese of Como, but was at the Somascan College on a scholarship. Later on he was deeply influenced by St. John Bosco, with whom he spent three years of his life. But he never forgot the beginnings of his priestly vocation, protected and nourished by the Somascan environment and the charism of St. Jerome our Founder.

May the Lord be praised for this masterpiece of His work which is going to be presented to the Church as a model and a pattern.

500 Years of Freedom - Follow Up

(A continuation of the previous post)
That night, however, had not been just a miraculous escape from the army of the enemies. The Virgin had made him free from the chains that imprisoned his soul.

Saint Jerome, as we came to know him nowadays, became one of the actors of the Catholic Reformation, along with other great saints like St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Francis Xavier, St. Cajetan of Thiene, St. Anthony Mary Zaccaria, and also Pope Paul IV (who, as a Bishop, had been St. Jerome's spiritual director), and some others. He shared a spiritual friendship with a few of them.

His liberation turned out to be freedom for many other people.

He came in contact with the Brotherhood of Divine Love, a forge of saints. Their first aim was the reformation of their members. He expressed his commitment by serving – along with the other brothers – people affected by incurable diseases: the marginalised of his time. The bodily chains of those sick people could merely be alleviated, but the ones of their soul were broken.

He desired a reformed Church, resplendent with sanctity; liberated, in fact, by the worldly ties to which several if her members fettered her.

His thirst for a renewed Christianity on the pattern of the early community of Jerusalem was positively contagious. He, a lay man, became a guide and reference person to numerous lay people and priests: the Company of the Servants of the Poor, later recognised and approved by St. Pius V under the name of Clerics Regular of Somasca (Somasca being the village where St. Jerome lived the last period of his life and eventually died). His companions found their own freedom in the footsteps of his.

He had been an orphan from a very young age. Hence he immediately noticed other chains to be broken: children who, having lost their parents in wars and famines, wondered in the streets of Venice, living by one's wits. He took them with himself; he became their Dad. With them he formed a sketch of reformed Church that attracted the attention of the people around, touched their heart, changed their life. This work developed into his and his companions' main field of expertise, and he spread it everywhere Bishops called him.

The Protestant heresy was gaining ground. St. Jerome went to the countryside and, with the help of his children, offered instruction about the Faith, which was most often dormant and unaware.

He died of plague on February 8th, 1537, the day we now observe as his liturgical memorial. His life had been spent to break chains and share with others the freedom he had received.

His companions, now known as Somascan Fathers and later flanked by a few women's congregations, have continued his work of liberation until our present time, in several areas of the world. Chains of various kinds and places continued to be shattered: oppression, ignorance, loneliness, poverty, marginalisation, violence, drug addiction, illness. Above all, the beauty and truth of our Faith made innumerable people free from the slavery of sin and falsehood.

September 27th, 2011, will bring us the fifth centenary of the liberation of St. Jerome Miani at the hands of the Madonna. Five hundred years of freedom: a milestone worthy of celebration.

The Holy Father Benedict XVI send a message in which he recognises love as the most important feature of the work of St. Jerome, and points it out as an urgent need of our time.

The Superior General of the Somascan Fathers inaugurated the jubilee year on September 25th, 2011, in the same place where St. Jerome's liberation was first made known: the Shrina of the Great Madonna of Treviso. Psalm 116 offer the central theme of the year: “You have broken my chains”. Various events will follow in the course of the year.

St. Jerome's quest for reformation and Christian authenticity has crossed the centuries. Today, in the appeal of Pope Benedict to fight the dictatorship of relativism, we cannot fail to recognise new mighty chains to be broken, for an even more beautiful Church, more faithful to her mission. There is no lack of work. Five hundred years of freedom and it's not over, yet.

Somascan Jubilee Year: 500 Years of Freedom

September 27th, 1511: Jerome Miani (or Emiliani), a Venetian nobleman, reported early in the morning at the gates of Treviso, the “mainland Venice”, within the territory of the same Republic. The city was besieged by the troops of the Cambrai League, a military alliance including various European powers that had been irked by reiterated expressions of Venetian pride.

A military officer, Miani had been entrusted with the task of defending an important outpost on the River Piave, the castle of Quero, which is still in existence today. On the previous August 27th, aided by the desertion of several defenders of the castle, the army of their enemies had prevailed. The Regent of the castle was taken a prisoner. His life had been spared, perhaps with the hope of exacting a ransom or effecting an exchange of high-ranking prisoners. In chains, Miani was obliged to follow the movements of the army of his enemies. No sign of his liberation was in sight.

Defeated, betrayed, forsaken. He was just twenty-five years old: too early to see his youthful dreams of glory and success being shattered on the rocks of the hard realities on the ground. The desperation of imprisonment polluted his soul. There was no future. Moreover, he had been brought up in the Catholic Faith like all siblings of Venetian nobility, but he had long before relegated it to formal and social purposes, fully taken up, as he was, by the web of his plans of glory and by the cheerful company of friends with whom he was was weaving it.

Faith. In the total darkness of those days, that humble discarded flame was the only one that still kept burning. The dazzling lights of the promises of the world, which earlier commanded his whole attention, had exhausted their oil.

The young Jerome clang to that light with all his strength. He did remember the Great Madonna of Treviso, so dear to all Venetians. That night he made a vow. The Blessed Virgin helped him to break free and run away, and escorted him to the gates of Treviso. He laid his fetters at her Shrine, and gave testimony of his liberation at the hands of his Heavenly Mother.

Somascan Jubilee Year

Some news.

Tomorrow, at 10 am, Italian time, the Superior General of the Somascan Fathers will inaugurate the celebrations of the fifth centenary (500 years!) of the miraculous liberation of our Founder St. Jerome from his imprisonment, at the hands of Mother Mary. Our Major Superiors from all countries where the Order is present are also in attendance, along with many other members of the Somascan Family, religious and lay.

I request the prayers of our friends: may this year, with all its events and significance, spur Somascans on to be faithful to the legacy of their Founder. May it also make that legacy widely available to the Church and the world that more and more people may benefit from it.

I think I will post more updates in the following days.

Sharpening the axe

I had the opportunity of spending a week on the mountains, in prayer and meditation. It is always a great time, when it comes once a year, a time in which one can re-focus on what matters the most, verify one's journey, and look ahead at the next stretch.

An elderly Benedictine monk guided my companions and me with wisdom and moderation. He started with a small story which may be known to many, but was unknown to me. I found it meaningful, so I share it.

A young man presented himself with his axe to the Foreman of a timber business, asking to be hired. The Foreman asked him to fell a nearby tree, and the eager young man did it in record time. So he was hired. It was a Monday morning.

On Thursday the Foreman met him again, asked him how he was, and then told him that he could collect his pay-check as he went home in the evening. The young man was surprised: “I thought we would get paid on Saturdays”, he said. “Yes, that's was we do. But you are going to be laid off today”, was the reply of the Foreman.

The young man was taken aback. “Why?” he asked.

“Your records show that your performance is dwindling steadily. You were the first ranker on Monday, but the number of trees you felled diminished every day. Today you are the last.”

“I've been working hard all week, even during coffee breaks.”

Sensing the young man's integrity, the Foreman asked him with a whisper: “Have you sharpened your axe?”

“No,” was the reply, “I've been too busy working. I've had no time to do that.”

Isn't it so true? We do need regular time to “sharpen our axe”, whatever our field of work and expertise. Else, we would work like coolies, and see no results.

In defence of the Family

August 6-10, 2011: we all read in the press shocking reports of intense rioting in London and suburbs.

August 15, 2011: the British Prime Minister R. D. Cameron addresses the Parliament about the issue. The speech is worth reading, and can be found at http://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2011/08/15/cameron-fight-back-speech-in-full. What is most remarkable, however, are the considerations about the causes of the riots. After acknowledging that the main cause is the fall of moral standards among the younger generation, a solution is outlined as primary: the protections of the family. Here is the relevant section:

“The question people asked over and over again last week was ‘where are the parents? Why aren’t they keeping the rioting kids indoors?’ Tragically that’s been followed in some cases by judges rightly lamenting: “why don’t the parents even turn up when their children are in court?”

Well, join the dots and you have a clear idea about why some of these young people were behaving so terribly. Either there was no one at home, they didn’t much care or they’d lost control.

Families matter.

I don’t doubt that many of the rioters out last week have no father at home. Perhaps they come from one of the neighbourhoods where it’s standard for children to have a mum and not a dad… …where it’s normal for young men to grow up without a male role model, looking to the streets for their father figures, filled up with rage and anger.

So if we want to have any hope of mending our broken society, family and parenting is where we’ve got to start. I’ve been saying this for years, since before I was Prime Minister, since before I was leader of the Conservative Party.

So: from here on I want a family test applied to all domestic policy. If it hurts families, if it undermines commitment, if it tramples over the values that keeps people together, or stops families from being together, then we shouldn’t do it.

[…] We are working on ways to help improve parenting – well now I want that work accelerated, expanded and implemented as quickly as possible. This has got to be right at the top of our priority list."

What will be done remains to be seen; but still, we do not hear very often this kind of blunt talk from a politician, for it is not “politically correct.”

We remember that the Holy Father has repeatedly indicated the defence of the family as one of the three “non negotiable principles” of Catholic social action.

There's work to do, for all of us.

Disappointment

There are days when you wish you never got up. Obstacles keep popping up, things do now seem to work, and your performance is less than lousy. You run and work, and you do not seem to have moved an inch from where you started. You just dream to make it back to your bed. Days you perceive like a big waste of time.

Often enough, they turn to be the milestones of your life. Milestones seldom come with a bang.

One thousand generations

Little Z. gave me a gift: he dropped a small puppet on the van, a ladybug surmounted by a small bee. I found it too late to give it back. So now it sits on my desk, a reminder of his brief presence.

Z. and the other children who visited us are the incarnations of the demanding choices their parents made during the years of their youth. They had the courage of swimming against the current of contemporary trends and world patterns, whenever those trends and patterns clashed with their Catholic Faith. Hard and unpopular as that might have been at the time, their children are now there to show the astonishing results.

It reminds me of the word of the Scripture: the Lord blesses the children of the just man up to the thousandth generation.

As I pause and contemplate God's work in them, I wonder: I had the venture of accompanying a number of seminarians towards their religious vows and priesthood. I am not their Dad, of course. My personal choices had obviously had an impact on the course of their development. How positive or negative, I cannot judge properly.

Wondering about the past is only helpful to live the present. All I can do is to strive so that my present choices have a positive impact on the people who are entrusted to me now. And to entrust all others to the loving hands of the Father.

World Youth Day

A few days have already lapsed from the conclusion of the World Youth Day in Madrid; I was not present there and I had not even got involved in following its preparation. And yet, it keeps echoing in my mind, it pops up in the sermons and classes I give, and above all it cheers me up, it brings a brisker step to my journey.

Much as I appreciate the guidance of the Holy Father (to the dismay of some dear friends of mine, who may have some reservations about it), I did not expect what I received through the media. The Holy Father took several long strides forward in his journey to fight the prevailing relativistic mentality. He repeatedly told different categories of people, and above all the youth, not to be afraid to search for Truth, the Truth, the only One. He, therefore, gave a shot in the arm to the millions of Catholics worldwide who care for a less mimetic, more assertive presence of our Church in the many arenas of today's world.

I am the least of them all, but I place myself among them. The benign and moderate – but nonetheless clear and straightforward – teachings of the Pope have given me great consolation. They keep ringing in my ears as a loving word of encouragement, as a pat on my shoulder: go ahead, you are not on a wrong path, after all.

Among other websites, one which I follow from its inception offered remarkable timely updates and analyses. Should anybody be interested, to keep in touch with developments in the church, here it is: http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/homepage/. Besides English, Italian and Spanish readers will find it in their own languages, too.

Queenship of Mary

In your honour, Queen of Angels and Saints, our Mother.

K., whose presence here cheered us up a few days ago, gave the final blow to my reluctance to write and “publish” online.

His provocation, however, had an easy task. It's a while since I realised how much I received from several writers and friends who dare to publish the fruit of their search for truth, or the steps they took in their life journey. I realise how much I receive, on a daily basis, and how little I offer. I've been nudged a few times to give my contribution. I've never said no; I've never done it, either. With a pang of guilt feeling lingering deep in my stomach.

I have no idea how relevant or helpful my posts may be. I've never been good at self-esteem, and very little gracious or adept at welcoming encouragement, appreciation or sympathy.

But here we are.

Whatever will be found on these pages, from today onwards, is my way of saying “thank you” to people who matter a lot to me, and whose thoughts and spiritual quest have helped shaping mine.