Camillus was born at Bacchianico in the Abruzzi in
1550. He was descended from the noble family of the Lellis, and his
mother was 60 years old at the time of his birth. While she was
pregnant with him, she dreamt that she gave birth to a little boy who
was signed on the breast with the cross and was the leader of a band
of children wearing the same sign. In his youth Camillus became a
soldier, first of the Republic of Venice, and later of the Kingdom of
Naples. During his time in the military he became addicted to
gambling and was reduced to destitution. At the age of 26 he was
enlightened by heavenly grace and seized with so great a sorrow for
having offended God that, on the spot he shed a flood of tears, and
firmly resolved unceasingly to wash away the stains of his past life
and put on the new man. Therefore on the very day of his conversion,
which was the feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
he hastened to the Friars Minors Capuchins, and begged to be admitted
into their Order. His request was granted on this and on a subsequent
occasion, but each time a horrible ulcer, from which he had suffered
before, broke out again on his leg. He twice laid aside the
Franciscan habit, which he had twice asked for and obtained. He set
out for Rome and was received into the Hospital of the Incurables,
finding his vocation in serving the sick.
His virtues became so well known that the
management of the institution was entrusted to him and he discharged
it with the greatest integrity and a truly paternal solicitude. He
esteemed himself the servant of all the sick, and was accustomed to
make their beds, wash them, heal their sores and aid them in their
last agony with his prayers and pious exhortations. In discharging
these offices he gave striking proofs of his wonderful patience,
unconquered fortitude and heroic charity. But when he perceived how
great an advantage the knowledge of letters would be to him in
assisting those in danger of death, to whose service he had devoted
his life, he was not ashamed at the age of 32 to return to school and
to learn the first elements of grammar among children. Camillus
decided to become a priest and was ordained by the last of the
English bishops, Thomas Goldwell of Saint Asaph. Camillus founded the
Congregation of Regular Clerks, Servants of the sick. In this work he
was wonderfully strengthened by a heavenly voice coming from an image
of Christ crucified, which, by an admirable miracle loosing the hands
from the wood, stretched them out towards him. He obtained the
approbation of his Order from the Apostolic See. Its members bind
them selves by a fourth and very arduous vow to minister to the sick,
even those infected with the plague.
Saint Philip Neri, who was his Confessor, attested
how pleasing this institution was to God, and how greatly it
attributed towards the salvation of souls, for he declared that he
often saw Angels suggesting words to disciples of Camillus, when they
were assisting those in their agony. When he had thus bound himself
more strictly than before to the service of the sick, Camillus
devoted himself with marvellous ardour to watching over their
interests, by night and by day, till his last breath. No labour could
tire him, no peril of his life could frighten him. He became all to
all, and claimed for himself the lowest offices, which he discharged
promptly and joyfully, in the humblest manner, often on bended knees,
as though he saw Christ Himself present in the sick. In order to be
more at the command of all in need, he laid aside the general
government of the Order and deprived himself of the heavenly delights
with which he was inundated during contemplation. His fatherly love
for the unfortunate shone out with greatest brilliancy when Rome was
suffering first from a contagious distemper, and then from a great
scarcity of provisions, and also when a dreadful plague was ravaging
Nola in Campania.
Camillus was consumed with so great a love of God
and his neighbour that he was called an Angel, and merited to be
helped by the Angels in different dangers which threatened him on his
journeys. He was endowed with the gift of prophecy and the grace of
healing, and he could read the secrets of hearts. By his prayers he
at one time multiplied food, and at another changed water into wine.
At length, worn out by watching, fasting and ceaseless labour, he
seemed to be nothing but skin and bones. He endured courageously five
long and troublesome sicknesses, which he used to call the “Mercies
of the Lord,” and strengthened by the Sacraments with the sweet
names of Jesus and Mary on his lips, he fell asleep in our Lord,
while these words were being said: “May Christ Jesus appear to you
with a sweet and gracious countenance.” He died at Rome, at the
hour he had foretold, on the day before the Ides of July, 1614, the
sixty-fifth of his age. He was made illustrious by many miracles, and
Pope Benedict XIV canonised him in 1746. Pope Leo XIII, at the desire
of the Bishops of the Catholic world, and with the advice of the
Congregation of Rites, declared him the heavenly Patron of all nurses
and of the sick in all places, and ordered his name to be invoked in
the Litanies for the Agonising.
Dom
Prosper Guéranger:
The Holy Spirit, who desires to raise our souls above this Earth, does not therefore despise our bodies. The whole man is His creature and His temple, and it is the whole man He must lead to eternal happiness. The Body of the Man-God was His masterpiece in material creation. The Divine delight He takes in that perfect Body He extends in a measure to ours, for that same Body, framed by Him in the womb of the most pure Virgin, was from the very beginning the model on which ours are formed. In the re-creation which followed the Fall, the Body of the Man-God was the means of the world’s redemption, and the economy of our salvation requires that the virtue of His saving Blood should not reach the soul except through the body, the Divine Sacraments being all applied to the soul through the medium of the senses. Admirable is the harmony of nature and grace. The latter so honours the material part of our being, that she will not draw the soul without it to the light and to Heaven. For in the unfathomable mystery of sanctification the senses do not merely serve as a passage. They themselves experience the power of the Sacraments, like the higher faculties of which they are the channels, and the sanctified soul finds the humble companion of her pilgrimage already associated with her in the dignity of Divine adoption which will cause the glorification of our bodies after the resurrection. Hence the care given to the very body of our neighbour is raised to the nobleness of holy charity, for being inspired by this charity, such acts partake of the love with which our heavenly Father surrounds even the members of His beloved children. “I was sick, and you visited me” (Matthew xxv. 36), our Lord will say on the last day, showing that even the infirmities of our fallen state in this land of exile, the bodies of those whom He deigns to call His brethren, share in the dignity belonging by right to the eternal, only-begotten Son of the Father. The Holy Spirit, too, whose office it is to recall to the Church all the words of our Saviour, has certainly not forgotten this one. The seed, falling into the good earth of chosen souls, has produced a hundredfold the fruits of grace and heroic self-devotion.
Camillus of Lellis received it lovingly, and the mustard-seed became a great tree offering its shade to the birds of the air. The Order of Regular Clerks, Ministering to the sick, or of happy death, deserves the gratitude of mankind. As a sign of Heaven’s approbation, Angels have more than once been seen assisting its members at the bedside of the dying.
ANGEL of charity, by what wonderful paths did the Divine Spirit lead you! The vision of your pious mother remained long unrealised. Before taking on you the holy Cross and enlisting comrades under that sacred sign, you served the odious tyrant who will have none but slaves under his standard, and the passion of gambling was well near your ruin. O Camillus, remembering the danger you incurred, have pity on the unhappy slaves of passion. Free them from the madness with which they risk, to the caprice of chance, their goods, their honour and their peace in this world and in the next. Your history proves the power of grace to break the strongest ties and alter the most inveterate habits. May these men, like you, turn their bent towards God and change their rashness into love of the dangers to which holy charity may expose them! For charity, too, has its risks, even the peril of life, as the Lord of charity laid down His life for us: a heavenly game of chance, which you played so well that the very Angels applauded you. But what is the hazarding of earthly life compared with the prize reserved for the winner?
According to the commandment of the Gospel read by the Church in your honour, may we all, like you, love our brethren as Christ has loved us! Few, says Saint Augustine, love one another to this end, that God may be all in all. You, O Camillus, having this love, exercised it by preference towards those suffering members of Christ’s mystic Body in whom our Lord revealed Himself more clearly to you, and in whom His kingdom was nearer at hand. Therefore has the Church in gratitude chosen you together with John of God to be guardian of those homes for the suffering which she has founded with a mother’s thoughtful care. Do honour to that Mother’s confidence. Protect the hospitals against the attempts of an odious and incapable secularisation which, in its eagerness to lose the souls, sacrifices even the corporal well-being of the unhappy mortals committed to the care of its evil philanthropy. In order to meet our increasing miseries, multiply your sons and make them worthy to be assisted by Angels. Wherever we may be in this valley of exile when the hour of our last struggle sounds, make use of your precious prerogative which the holy Liturgy honours today. Help us, by the spirit of holy love, to vanquish the enemy and attain to the heavenly crown!
