Don Guanella Village was founded in the mid 70‘s in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It includes a school for teenagers with developmental delays and is part of the Catholic Social Services. So when Don Guanella performed a miracle recently in a nearby Pennsylvania town, it was extra special. Saint Guanella’s Feast day is Wednesday, October 24th. Here is a poem from the Mystic Priest collection recently published.

MIRACLE DOOR

In America’s town
a skateboarder crashes
resulting in brain trauma.
A youth inside looking out
pleads to “bring me home,”
while doctors remove
his front temporal lobe.

Survival, meet vegetative state,
injected lunch with eyelids closed
a mother’s tears fall, resolved by faith
bound by love, a prayer request
brings Blessed Louis Guanella
across the divide to the healing line,
bone relics arrive first
banded around the wrist.

Faith breeds a miraculous recovery,
reborn youth discusses his ordeal
over a cup of tea
as befuddled doctors
vouch to The Higher Power
and a Blessed is made a Saint.(1)
Locals remember when Louis Guanella,
an Italian priest from the 1900’s
opened the miracle door in America
while the world peaked in.

(1) Canonization of St. Guanella: October 23, 2011.