On the Death of Fr. Ernesto Gandini

 When Fr. Gandini passed away, St. Luigi Orione wrote down a circular letter to his sons expressing his feelings.

Tortona, 19th February 1920

 

Dearest Sons of Divine Providence,

What sad news I am now about to give you, my sons in the Lord. (…)I cannot tell you what I feel in giving you this sad news.

Fr. Gandini is dead!  He died suddenly this morning in this House. Yesterday he was healthy, full of strength, serenely good-natured, alive: today he is dead! It does not seem true that he is dead! (…)

 He went off to rest peacefully, and now he is dead!  One can hardly believe it; yet it is so. And it seems that the hand of the Lord led him to say goodbye to everyone first.  On Sunday, being in Alessandria to celebrate Mass in our new parish of St. Rocco, he made a trip to his native village, to see once more his father, sister, brothers and brother-in-law.  Yesterday morning he then wanted to say Mass for the young people, at the altar of Our Lady of Divine Providence, even though another priest was due to say it, and it was his last Mass, and he distributed the sacred ashes, pronouncing these words over everyone's head: Remember, man, that you are dust! Then, late last evening, he also went into the infirmary, and into the printing office.  He stopped by everyone, poor Fr. Gandini!

I had taken him in when he was a child, there in that old convent of St. Clare, and his serene face and innocent look and, what is more, his pious and good behaviour, made me foresee that he would hear the voice of the Lord and become a priest, a priest with a modest soul, full of faith, innocence and goodness.  And I remember that I called him Johnny, because to me he seemed already to be completely of God and, looking at his fine face, also of St. John the Baptist. (…)

Yesterday evening Fr. Gandini had come to ask me if he could go to say Mass in the Cathedral today, in the place of another priest; and no-one was surprised this morning to find his room closed, as they thought he was already at the Cathedral. But, once 8 o'clock came, seeing that he was not back, someone sent for him and we discovered with a shock that he was not in the Cathedral and had not even gone there.

A terrible doubt then arose in us and increased dramatically. Fr. Gandini's room was locked.  We knocked and we called, but no-one answered.  We had to enter by a window.  And our poor Fr. Ernesto was there, stretched out on the floor, at the foot of his bed.

He was still alive, but unconscious and unable to speak.

His bed was unmade; he had obviously gone to rest and during the night he must have felt ill.  He would have got up to call for help but, perhaps suffering a heart attack, as the doctor said, he did not manage to get to the door, and collapsed on the ground where we found him.  He did not speak any more or give any sign of understanding.  I gave him absolution; I commended his soul; I anointed him with the Holy Oil, but a quarter of an hour  later he was already dead!  It was not yet nine o'clock.  How quickly death comes!

My dear son, were you waiting for me then to breathe forth your soul in my hands?

Also present were Fr. Zanocchi, Fr. Draghi, Fr. Enrico Bariani and several of the senior seminarians and young people.

While I am writing to you our Fr. Gandini is there, on his death bed, and seems to be asleep.  His face still has that serene expression of gentleness and goodness which was so like him.  He is clothed in his sacred habit and his priestly stole.  On his breast is his Crucifix and his hands are joined in prayer.  His fingers are clutching his Rosary.  He will probably be buried in the cemetery of Predosa, his village, near his mother who was a truly Christian mother, and my heart is troubled, but I want to take him there.

 And now what shall I say to you, my brothers?  It is a great anguish, but the Lord gave, the Lord took away: Blessed be the Name of the Lord. May the Lord's will be done!  May the Lord always be blessed, blessed in life and blessed in death!  Although this sudden death gives me great pain, I have no doubt that, as Fr. Ernesto had always lived as a good religious, he was found ready for the great step. He had consecrated himself entirely to God and the Church!  It will be a great sorrow for us all my sons, but let us be consoled by these words. We are comforted, as we well know that our brother belonged to God, and it is right that God does with His own according to His mind and will, neither do we despair like those who have no hope - that would not be Christian.  We will see him again.  We have full hope in immortality!  He has just gone before us to show us the way.  And the Lord will lighten our grief, and will use this death to increase our numbers.  I can see more and more coming... sent by God.  Happy are they who, listening to the voice from Heaven, come to fill the place left empty by Fr. Gandini.

In any case this sudden disappearance proves to me ever more how useful it would be for us all to make a point of making the exercise of a good death every month.

This is how death can surprise us at any time, and suddenly.

It respects neither youth nor strength of character, but comes like a thief, at a time when we are least expecting it.

The Lord has visited our Institution; let us adore Him and pray to Him!  Yes my sons, let us pray and persevere in our holy vocation, and let us be vigilant with our lamps in our hands, always ready.

For me and for you this sudden death is a special word from God.

A word which invites us not only to bow our heads reverently, to become humble and to adore the inscrutable judgements of the Lord; but a word which comes to shake us, to fill us with the fervour of a religious life of virtue and holiness.  This is what God wants from me and from you.

And He wants us to pray for our dear dead brother, and pray deeply.  The prayers will be a comfort for us and a relief for him.  Even if he has already gone up to that God, who can find stains even on the white wings of His angels, even if Fr. Gandini had no more need of our prayer, it would not be in vain.  Merciful as he always was towards sufferers, he will joyfully see the Lord distribute to others those prayers dutifully said by us for his soul.  And may we be comforted by the thought that one day we shall meet our Fr. Ernesto in Heaven where, at the feet of our Holy Mother in Paradise, he will be praying for me and for you, and he will be an angel of consolation for our sorrows, as well as the other brothers who have gone before us to our Home.

Rest in the peace of Christ then, my gentle and blessed son, who have left this miserable life for a blessed life.  May the angels of the Lord go with you to Heaven; may they take you into that holy Jerusalem and, on the palms of their hands, may the Virgins and Martyrs bear you to the throne of God.  Then, united with the Heart of Jesus Crucified, pray for us!  We will all soon come with you; we want to be with you always, in the arms of the Lord for ever, and close to our heavenly Mother.

         You see it is just a short wait for you and for us:  This life is a fleeting shadow.

Oh Fr. Gandini, my dearest son who have loved God, the Church and her Pope; who have served God in the little ones and the poor orphans:  I embrace you for me and for them, and for your brothers in the Congregation who are not here.  For all our people who, far away, lament your death with sorrowful yet sweet tears, I embrace you and kiss your forehead, with a holy kiss!

         Goodbye my blessed son, sleep in Christ:  Tomorrow we shall be together again.

Your Father in Jesus Crucified and in Our Lady,

  Fr. Luigi Orione of Divine Providence.

Don Orione´s Shoes

             When you approach the casket which contains Don Orione´s body in the shrine of Our Lady of Safe-keeping (Santuario della Madonna della Guardia, Tortona), you will be amazed to see how old and worn the shoes that the Founder is wearing are; you cannot fail to notice that there is a great hole in one of the soles.

            At a casual glance a pilgrim might suppose that it is a simple oversight, but those old shoes truly reflect the evangelical poverty which Don Orione embraced during his life.

 

             Let us consider some passages in his life which bear this out.

        In his book “I fioretti di Don Orione” (“Don Orione’s Little Flowers”), Bishop Gemma tells us about a simple and direct gesture of Don Orione´s charity:

“…Don Orione was returning on foot from a mission he had preached in a mountain village. He knocked at the door of the parish priest of Borgoratto Mormorola and was treated as a welcome, if unexpected, guest. He was soaking wet and tired. He was given a change of clothes, some food and a fine pair of new shoes, which he immediately put on in place of the old ones, which were worn-out as usual.

Doctor Alberto Bernardelli happened to be in the presbytery, too, and when Don Orione expressed his wish to continue on his journey as soon as possible, he offered to take him in his own carriage as far as Casteggio.

They left the next morning, but stopped when they reached Fornace di Staghiglione,  as the doctor had to make a visit there. In the meantime a shabbily dressed beggar approached Don Orione, who was left alone in the carriage, asking for alms. Without a moment’s hesitation Don Orione unlaced the new shoes he was wearing and handed them over to the poor man. He then put on the worn-out ones which were still sodden with water.  It would have been hard to say which of the two was the happier.” [1]

            As time went by, his religious and other people would learn to recognize Don Orione by his old and worn-out shoes.

            There was once an amusing occasion when nobody recognized Don Orione because he was wearing new shoes and clothes, which, of course, belonged to someone else.

“Every year on his name day, Mgr. Rousset, the archbishop of Reggio Calabria, used to invite guests to a banquet, and one year Don Orione was also invited. He left Messina and duly arrived at the party looking unusually smart: carefully shaven and sporting a new hat and cassock, shoes in fairly good order, and a large Sicilian cape. Indeed, this was not the Don Orione everyone was used to seeing, but a really weird sight!

Fr. Albera, his former seminary classmate and later his companion in the apostolate, was also in Sicily after the earthquake and in charge of the archbishop's soup kitchen. He eyed Don Orione from top to toe and called out: «Where did you get all that? Where did you steal it?»

«Shhh!» Don Orione replied, «Don't put me to shame!  I borrowed it all from four different people. If I had come in my own cloak, shoes, hat and cassock, they would have thrown me out like the man in the Gospel parable...»” [2]

Something interesting happened in a little town called Staghiglione, where Don Orione went to preach on the occasion of Fr. Risi´s first mass on 17^th June, 1900. The parishioners were excited to meet the young founder and superior of a new congregation. After the reading of the Gospel, a priest left the sacristy, genuflected before the altar and went up to the pulpit. Seeing his old, worn-out shoes, those nearest him commented: “That's not Don Orione! It can't be.” [3] But, a few seconds after he had begun his homily, the people remarked in their dialect: “L'é lú” (“it is him, it is him”)

In a circular letter on the occasion of Easter, Don Orione related what had happened to him one day when he was shoeless, and here we can see his sense of humour:

            “Some months ago the Archbishop of Milan, his Eminence Cardinal Schuster, after a visit to the Little Cottolengo of Milan, said to our Fr. Sterpi: “Write to Fr. Orione, and tell him that if he still has any money left when he gets back from America, I won’t believe it is really  him!”

  When this comment reached me, I couldn’t stop laughing for at least a quarter of an hour as, at that very moment, I had no  shoes, so I couldn’t even leave my room (…) I will place enmity between you and money,”  the Lord seems to have said to me.” [4]

Lastly, in his letter “the Little Work is for the poor”, Fr. Flavio Peloso reminds us of something which happened after Don Orione´s corpse was embalmed:

“Standing in front of Don Orione’s casket, we shall once again see those old, worn-out shoes with a hole in the sole. As I look at those shoes I will think about what I heard from Doctor Maria Venturini, of Prof. Msgr. Gianfranco Nolli’s medical team, which had preserved Don Orione’s body.

«When we clothed him”, the expert doctor of anatomy recounts, “the priests gave us a pair of new shoes for his feet. We put them on him but, strangely, the next morning we found that they had come off. We tried again the following evening, and, in the morning, we found them again off his feet. Fr. Ignazio Terzi remarked to us, with what seemed to us rather pious reasoning, that perhaps Don Orione did not want new shoes, but old shoes, like a poor person. So we put on an old pair of shoes, which fitted him well. They are the ones that are still on the feet of Don Orione»”.[5]

         Looking at Don Orione´s body wearing old shoes, we remember how great his love for the poor and how generous his heart was.

So, when you visit the shrine of Our Lady of Safe-keeping, remember that the Founder´s mortal remains are awaiting the Lord’s coming, as Don Orione would have wished, wearing the shoes of a poor man.

Fr. Facundo Mela FDP

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[1] A. Gemma, I fioretti di Don Orione, Bologna, Edizione Dehoniane Bologna, 2002², 99-100. [unpublished translation]

[2] A. Gemma, I fioretti di Don Orione, Bologna, Edizione Dehoniane Bologna, 2002², 119. [unpublished translation]

[3] Cf. A. Gemma, I fioretti di Don Orione, Bologna, Edizione Dehoniane Bologna, 2002², 101-103. [unpublished translation]

[4] Circular letter. Buenos Aires, Easter 1936.

[5] F. Peloso, “Resti ben determinato che la piccolo opera è per i poveri” (“May it be very clear that the Little Work is for the poor”), Atti e Comunicazioni della Curia Generale (Don Orione), 64, 231 (January-May 2010) [Unpublished translation].

The Little Work of Divine Providence

In a letter written in 1938, Don Orione described his Congregation and its programme.

What is it?

It is a humble religious Congregation, modern in its men and in its systems, wholly and only consecrated to the good of the people and of the children of the people, trusting in Divine Providence.

Born for the poor, in order to achieve its aim it establishes itself in working class centers, and preferably in the most wretched districts and suburbs on the outskirts of the great industrial cities. It lives little and poor among the little and poor people, mixing with the humble workers, encouraged by the blessing of the Church and with the substantial support of the authorities and of all those whose spirits are open to the new times, with great and generous hearts.

It goes to the people with more than words, with the example and holocaust of a life offered day and night with Christ, for the love and salvation of its brothers.

While living a single Faith, and having one heart and soul and a single government, it develops many activities according to the various needs of men it meets, adapting, through the charity of Christ, to the different ethnic demands of the nations among which the hand of God has transplanted it.

It is not, therefore, one-sided, but just wants to sow Christ, the Faith and civility in the humblest and most needy furrows of humanity. It assumes different forms and methods, creates and nourishes various institutions, evaluating in its apostolate all experiences and suggestions drawn from the local authorities.

Its programme: charity

It yearns to spread among the people the Gospel and the love for the sweet Christ on earth, as well as a livelier and greater spirit of fraternal charity among men. It is directed towards raising the working classes, both religiously and socially, saving them from poor, fatal ideologies, and building up and uniting the people in Christ.

Its field is charity, without excluding truth and justice, but truth and justice done in charity.

The Little Work wants to serve and to serve with love: it intends, with the help of God, to carry out the works of mercy, in a practical way, for the moral and material relief of the poor.

Its life is to love, pray and educate orphans and the most abandoned children of the people in virtue and work: it is to suffer and sacrifice itself with Christ.

Its privilege is to serve Christ in the most abandoned and rejected poor.

Its cry is St. Paul’s “Charitas Christi urget nos” [The love of Christ urges us on], and its programme is Dante’s “Our charity closes no doors”.

So, it welcomes and embraces all who in sorrow but who have no one to give them bread, a roof or some comfort: it becomes all things to all men, to draw all men to Christ. So that it comes from a lively throbbing of that love which is always alert and ready for all the needs of our suffering brothers. This Little Work of Divine Providence wants to be almost a current of living, beneficial water which branches out its channels in order to irrigate the driest and most forgotten strata, and fertilize them with Christ.

It is a work of God

It is a new plant which has emerged at the feet of the Church, in the garden of Italy, not through the work of man, but through a divine breath of the goodness of the Lord.

And it is developing from year to year, in the light and in the heat of God, to comfort thousands and thousands of bodies and spirits. It is a unique plant with diverse branches, all living with the same sap, all turned to Heaven and flowering with love for God and men.

This is, perhaps, the least among the works of Faith and charity which have sprung from the heart of Jesus, but wishes to be second to none in consuming itself in the love and service of the Church, of our country and of the people. Everything tells us that God alone has raised it up and is spreading it, in spite of our wretchedness, through extremely painful trials and even per ignem et aquam [through fire and water], sure of giving the help of Faith to us men of little Faith.  

It is a work of Faith

In a time of positivism, of worldly greed and money, the Little Work of Divine Providence intends, therefore, under the patronage of the heavenly Virgin, to wipe away many tears, to raise minds and hearts to that good which is not of this world and which alone can fill and satisfy the heart of every man.

It wishes to co-operate in a modest way, with great humility and kneeling at the feet of Rome, in keeping the people faithful or bringing them back to the Church and to the country, and to save the little ones, the humble, those most led astray or our brothers in Christ who suffer most.

Laus Deo! [God be praised!].

“He will be a Shining Light of the Spirit of Don Orione"

On the 5th of October 1962 Fr. Carlo Mario Pensa the second successor of Don Orione passed away.He was a young man who after meeting Saint Luigi Orione decided to join his Congregation

In his letter “He will be a Shining Light of the Spirit of Don Orione”, Fr. Flavio Peloso tells us about this encounter.

Carlo Pensa was born on the 27th July 1886 at Scaldasole, in the province of Pavia. He met don Orione here because he came from time to time to preach and exercise his priestly ministry. He entrusted to him his life and his holy desires. Don Orione received him into the Institute of Santa Chiara in Tortona.  Carlo Pensa was already 17 years old and had some experience of life and sacrifice.

Many years later he recounted how he decided on his vocation.

“Already in 1902 in Scaldasole (Pavia), my home town, I used to hear about don Orione as if he were a saint. For some time I had been thinking of dedicating my whole life to the religious life.  I felt I had been called in the light of a fact that I had always considered providential.  I had gone to Pavia to buy some things. I saw on a stall with used books a copy of l’Apparecchio alla morte.  (In preparation for death). I bought it.  It cost me one lira if I remember correctly.  When I got home, I put it on the mantle piece of our kitchen where we used to gather on the winter evenings, and I got to reading it.  It was that reading of it that made me understand with great intensity that “porro unum est necessarium” (only one thing is necessary) (c.f. Lk 10:41).

I met don Orione in the October of 1902 when he came to visit my home town of  Scaldasole through the invitation of my parish priest.  With four of my friends we went to visit him in the presbytery in the evening.  We were all intent on giving our lives to God. 

 The following morning I went to confession to don Orione.  I made a general confession. He listened to my sins with eyes lowered and did not interrupt me.  Then he showed me the crucifix which was on the kneeler: it was of bronze and at the edges had shiny studs. “See” he said “this is the crucifix that St John Bosco had before the penitents when he was confessing them.  How many people must have wept for their sins before this crucifix!”. He added a few words to encourage me to have a living sorrow and reminding me of death, judgement, hell and the passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Then I attended his Mass and I remember that he then gave an explanation of the gospel that made a lasting impression on all who heard it.  The encounter was so powerful that the following year and exactly on 14th October 1903 I entered the Little Work of Divine Providence. ”.

You can read the whole letter on the following link: http://www.donorione.org/Public/ContentPage/content.asp