Saint Camillus de Lellis

He embraced and then abandoned the profession of arms several times. Touched by the modesty of two Saint Francis religious who were passing through the streets of Zermo, he made a vow to renounce the disorder of his life to imitate theirs; but he thought no more of it a few days later. He renewed this vow when he saw himself near death in a terrible storm that lasted three days and three nights; but once on land, he remembered it no more. His passion for gambling knew no bounds: he ended up gambling away his sword, his arquebus, his cloak, and even his shirt. He had to beg so as not to die of hunger: he was seen holding out his hat to passersby with one hand, while with the other he covered his face, which was red with shame. He finally hired himself out as a mason's assistant to the Capuchins of Siponto, who were having a building constructed: the work was undoubtedly harsh and lowly, but they gave him enough to quench his thirst and hunger, and to protect his body from the cold. He must have then understood the dire consequences of passions and made serious reflections on the miseries of this world. This was the circumstance that Our Lord had arranged to touch his heart and detach him from the earth.

The guardian of a convent to which he had been sent to fetch something took him aside in the garden, and there he spoke to him of the necessity of fleeing sin and giving himself entirely to God. The next day, while returning on horseback, he was thinking about what the Father had said to him: suddenly, struck by an interior light that showed him his sins and the judgments of God, he threw himself off his horse, knelt on a stone in the middle of the road, and cried out while shedding a torrent of tears: "Ah! Unhappy, miserable wretch that I am, why have I known my Lord and my God so late? How have I remained deaf to so many calls? So many crimes! Would it not be better if I had never been born? Pardon, Lord, pardon for this miserable sinner: grant him time to perform true penance." While saying this, he struck his chest forcefully, thanked God for the kindness He had shown him, and renewed his vow to become a Franciscan. "I no longer wish to remain in the world," he added, "I renounce it forever." Indeed, upon his arrival at the convent, he reconciled with God, and from that day on he remained faithful to grace; not only did he never again fall into mortal sin, resolved as he was, he said, to let himself be torn to pieces rather than commit any, but he began to strive for the summit of Christian perfection.

While waiting to be received into the Order, he practiced its austerities: he wanted to observe a rigorous Lent, accompanying fasting with frequent disciplines; he went to Matins with the religious, worked in the garden, swept the convent, washed the dishes, in a word, he sought out the humblest tasks. He was soon sent to perform his novitiate at the convent of Trivento.

His guardian angel saved his life on this journey. As he prepared in the evening to cross a river, he heard a voice cry out to him from the top of a nearby mountain: "Do not go any further, do not cross!" He looked to see who was speaking to him, and, seeing no one, he continued to advance; but the same voice called him three times and finally managed to stop him; he retraced his steps and rested for the night under a tree: the next day, he learned that the river was very deep at that spot, and that he would certainly have lost his life there had he not stopped. As soon as he was in that convent, he edified everyone. He was never called anything other than humble brother. But, as we have already said, God had other designs for him: an ulcer he had previously contracted on his leg reopened, and the religious, to their great regret, were obliged to dismiss him. He went to Rome and remained for four years as a servant at the Hospital of Saint James: as soon as his leg was healed, he returned to the Capuchin novitiate, despi te Saint Philip Neri, saint Philippe de Néri Founder of the Oratory and a model for Sebastian Valfré. his confessor, who said these prophetic words to him: "Goodbye, Camillus, you persist in wanting to become a Capuchin, but the wound will reopen and you will have to leave a second time." This is what happened, and the Franciscans of the Observance refused to receive him for the same reason. Our Lord was thus detaching him from everything, and reserving him for His designs, which He finally made known to him. One day, as Camillus was caring for the sick in the hospital where he had returned as a servant, he said to himself: "Ah! What is needed here are men who are not led by the love of money, but by the love of Our Lord; who would be true mothers to these poor sick people, and not mercenaries. But how to find men who would sacrifice themselves to this point?" Then he thought of the cross of Our Lord: "If they wore it," he said to himself, "on their chest, this sight would sustain them, encourage them, and reward them."

He spoke of his pious design to those of his companions whom he believed to be animated by greater charity than the others; they entered into his views with eagerness; they adorned a small room, which they made into an oratory, and gathered there to pray, to read pious literature, and to prepare themselves, as the Apostles did of old, to receive the Holy Spirit for the establishment of their Order. They encountered great obstacles there; they were accused of aspiring to the direction of the hospital: their oratory was closed. Camillus carried the crucifix in his arms while weeping, and placed it in his room; at night, while he was sleeping, it seemed to him that he saw this crucifix consoling him by moving its head toward him, and he heard it pronounce these words: "Fear nothing, I will help you and will be with you." The same miracle was renewed several times: when he was discouraged, he saw the crucifix detach its hands from the cross and extend them toward him, saying to him: "Why are you afflicted? Pursue this matter, I will come to your aid; it is not your enterprise, it is mine." Sustained by this assurance, and knowing well that the enterprises of God always succeed, he did not recoil before any difficulty in order to put himself in a position to assist the sick more usefully; he prepared himself to receive Holy Orders. It is easy to imagine how much this preparation must have cost an old soldier, who had forgotten the little he had learned in his youth: he began to study grammar and even followed the courses of the Roman College: the children laughed at a fellow student so aged (he was over thirty-two years old), and whose tall stature contrasted with theirs; they said to him: Tarde venisti: "You have come very late to school." — "Yes, he has come late," his professor replied one day, "but he will make up for lost time and will do great things in the Church of God." He had the happiness of saying his first Mass on June 10 of the year 1584. Having been charged with serving the chapel of Our Lady of Miracles, it was there that he founded his Congregation with only two companions. They were very poor, but full of joy to suffer for Jesus Christ. Their time was divided between prayer and the care of the sick. They went every day to the great hospital of the Holy Spirit, consoling grand hôpital du Saint-Esprit Roman hospital where Camillus and his brothers served the sick. the infirm, making the beds, sweeping the wards, dressing the wounds, and preparing the remedies that the doctors had ordered. Never did the sick have servants more attentive to their slightest desires: they were true mothers at the bedside of their children. The needs of the soul were no less succored than those of the body; the new brothers prepared them to receive the last sacraments, helping them with their prayers, not leaving them until death, after having seen them fall asleep in the peace of the Lord. How many poor sinners have owed their salvation to them! How many blessed souls today bless in heaven the charity of the holy priest, who had provided them with those final aids upon which eternity depends.

Powerful adversaries sought to thwart his designs; but his trust in God triumphed over everything. In 1585, his friends, or rather divine Providence, procured for him a convenient house to lodge his Congregation. However, the Order was still in misery: it even had considerable debts. This plunged the brothers into the greatest anxiety; one would have said that the trust of our Saint in divine Goodness was only the greater for it: he knew that a father never has more pity for his children than when he sees them most abandoned.

"My Fathers and my Brothers," he had said to them one day when they were expressing their fears to him, "one must never doubt Providence; not a month will pass before it comes to our aid and pays all our debts. Remember what that benign Savior," he added, pointing to the tabernacle, "said to the holy virgin Catherine of Siena: Catherine, think of me, and I will think of you. Thus, let us think of Him and of our poor, so that He may think of us. Is it so difficult for Him to give us a little of those temporal goods with which He has filled the Jews and the Turks, who are the enemies of our faith?"

Another time, as his creditors said to him: "Well! Father, when will you finish paying us?"

"Do not worry," the Saint replied; "is God not powerful enough to send bags of money here tomorrow morning?"

The creditors began to laugh, saying: "The time of miracles is past."

The Saint's trust was not deceived, and his prophecy was realized; for at that time died Cardinal Mondovi, the friend and benefactor of the Order. On the point of leaving this life, he took the hands of S aint Camillus in cardinal Mondovi Benefactor of the Order who left a significant legacy. his trembling hands, and pressing them one last time, he said to him with a look full of tenderness: "Father, I have loved you in life and in death; remember to pray for me."

The Saint, touched by so much kindness, could only answer him with his tears and his prayers. Soon the Cardinal expired, and the Saint understood what he had meant to tell him with these words: "I have loved you in life and in death"; for, upon opening the will, it was found that he left the religious of the Madeleine fifteen thousand Roman scudi, that is to say more than eighty thousand francs, a very considerable sum at that time.

As God provided resources to Camille, he, wishing to dedicate to God all that he had received, embraced new works of charity with his Order. He wanted his brothers to commit themselves to serving the plague-stricken, the prisoners, and even those who were dying in their own homes. Their primary care was to assist souls by suggesting to the sick acts of religion appropriate to the state in which they found themselves. Camille provided the priests of his Order with the best books of piety that dealt with penance and the Passion of Jesus Christ, and recommended that they make, from the Psalms, a collection of those touching prayers called ejaculatory prayers, so that they might use them in times of need. He ordered them to assist the dying above all, to have them settle their temporal affairs early so that they would occupy themselves only with that of their salvation; not to leave them too long with friends or relatives who might disturb them through an excess of tenderness; to lead them into vivid sentiments of penance, resignation, faith, hope, and charity; to teach them to accept death in a spirit of sacrifice and in expiation of their sins, and to exhort them to ask for mercy through the merits of the agonizing Savior; to conjure Him to apply to them the fruit of that prayer He made on the cross, to grant them the grace to offer Him their death in union with His, and to be willing to receive their soul into the bosom of glory. He formed a collection of prayers that were to be recited for those who were in their agony. There was no one who was not charmed by an establishment that had charity as its principle. The project seemed all the more admirable in that it had been formed and executed by a man without letters and without credit. Pope Sixtus V confirmed it in 1586 and ordered that the new congregation be governed by a triennial superior. Camille wa s the f Sixte V Pope who edited the works of Ambrose. irst. He was given the church of Saint Mary Magdalene for his use and that of his brothers. He was invited, in 1588, to come to Naples in order to found a house of his Order th église de Sainte-Marie-Madeleine Seat of the Order and burial place of Camille. ere. He went there with twelve of his companions and did what was asked of him. These pious servants of the sick (this was the name they took) flew to the rescue of the plague-stricken who were on the galleys that had not been allowed to dock. Two of them died as victims of their charity. In the year 1590, a great famine spread over Rome and all of Italy; the poor were reduced to feeding on dead animals and often on raw herbs. Saint Camille made provision of bread and clothing, which he went about distributing in Rome to all those who were in need. He never refused anything, and when it was pointed out to him that the poor sold or gambled away the objects he gave them, he was accustomed to reply: "But do you not know that Our Lord is perhaps hidden under the rags of these unfortunates? How could I dare to refuse charity to my Lord?" The cold, which was very rigorous that year, further increased the ravages caused by the famine. The poor died by the thousands; there were up to sixty thousand deaths in the city of Rome and its surroundings. The Saint multiplied himself to provide for all these miseries; he walked the streets, carrying bread, clothing, and wine, entering stables, barns, and ancient ruins, finding everywhere unfortunates frozen with cold and hunger, to whom he restored life through his aid. How many times did he not give his cloak to the poor he met? The hospitals being overcrowded, he made his convent a hospital where he received all those he could house there. No representation stopped him when it came to his dear friends the poor; he gave them even his last sack of flour, and when his religious pointed out to him that they would be reduced to dying of hunger in their turn, he replied simply that the birds of the air neither plowed nor sowed, that God fed them nonetheless, and that He would know how to feed them as well. That very day, in fact, a baker from the city brought them bread, promising not to let them lack any as long as the famine lasted: and he kept his word religiously.

In 1591, Gregory XIV Grégoire XIV Pope who offered a bishopric to Andrew Avellino. erected the new congregation into a religious Order, and granted it all the privileges of the mendicant Orders, under the obligation, however, of adding to the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.

LIVES OF THE SAINTS. — TOUR VIII. 23 the vow to serve the sick, even those who might be stricken with the plague. He forbade them from transferring to other religious communities, except for the Carthusians. In 1592 and 1600, Clement VIII confirmed the same Order and granted it new privileges.

Saint Camillus neglected nothing to prevent the abuses that crept even into places consecrated by charity. His zeal became all the more ardent when he discovered that in hospitals, people were sometimes buried who were not yet dead. He ordered his religious to continue prayers for the dying for some time even after they appeared to have breathed their last, and not to allow their faces to be covered immediately, as had always been the practice; but his attention to assisting souls far outweighed that which he had for relieving the body. He spoke to the sick with an unction that was impossible to resist; he taught them to repair the defects of their past confessions and to enter into the dispositions required of the dying. All his discourse revolved around the love of God, even in ordinary conversations, and if he happened to hear a sermon where it was not mentioned, he would say that it was "a ring missing its diamond."

The servant of God was himself afflicted with various infirmities, the complication of which caused him to suffer greatly. What touched him most was not being able to serve the sick as before; at the very least, he strongly recommended them to the charity of his religious. He would still drag himself from one bed to another to see if they lacked anything and to suggest various acts of virtue to them. Often he was heard repeating these words of Saint Francis: "The happiness I hope for is so great that all pains and sufferings become for me a subject of joy."

Saint Camille did not oblige his religious to recite the Breviary unless they were in Holy Orders; but they were enjoined to confess and receive communion every Sunday and on all major feast days, to spend an hour in meditation each day, to hear Mass, to say the Rosary, and to offer other prayers.

He was the first to observe the laws of perfection he had given to his own; his entire life recounts his charity. We cannot, however, omit a trait of this virtue that paints him entirely: the sore he had on his leg sometimes made him fall. One day, some sick people, seeing him supporting himself with difficulty, said to him: "Father, rest a little, you are going to fall." — "My children," he immediately said to them, "I am your slave; I must do everything I can for your service." His chastity was such that all created things were for him only a ladder to ascend to the Creator. He did not practice humility to a lesser degree.

He despised himself to such a point that all who knew him were astonished. It was by an effect of this virtue that he resigned from the generalate in 1607; he wanted, through this resignation, to give himself more time to serve the poor. He founded houses of his Order in several cities, such as Milan, Bologna, Genoa, Florence, Ferrara, Messina, Mantua, etc.; he also sent some of his brothers to Hungary and other places afflicted by the plague. Nola having been attacked by this scourge in 1600, the bishop of the city appointed Camille his vicar general. The Saint devoted himself generously to the service of the plague-stricken. His companions followed his example, and there were five among them who paid with their lives.

After attending the fifth Chapter of his Order, which was held in Rome in 1613, he went to visit its various houses with the new general, everywhere making very touching exhortations, like a father speaking to his children for the last time. As he passed through his homeland, he said to his friends: "I am going to die in Rome; live as Christians if you wish to avoid hell; farewell, for we shall not see each other again." He predicted in Genoa that he would die on the day of Saint Bonaventure, for whom he had a particular devotion. Upon returning to Rome, his last visit was to the hospitals, where he also said farewell to those he had loved most after God on earth, by caring for them with his almost dying hands. As soon as he learned that the doctors despaired of his mortal life, his heart beat with joy and impatience on the threshold of eternal life, and his transports escaped in these words: "I rejoiced at what was said to me: we will go into the house of the Lord": *Lætus sum in his quæ dicta sunt mihi : in domum Domini ibimus*. He received the holy Viaticum from the hands of Cardinal Ginnasio, protector of his Order. When he saw his God in his room, he said, with tears in his eyes: "I recognize, Lord, that I am the greatest of sinners and that I do not deserve to receive the favor you deign to grant me; but save me by your infinite mercy. I place all my trust in the merits of your precious blood." Although he had purified his conscience through confession, he still feared that he was not well enough disposed. He had, however, led a very holy life, and he had confessed every day with the most vivid feelings of contrition. At the beginning of the night when he was to depart for heaven, he stretched his arms in the form of a cross, pronounced the sacred names of Jesus and Mary, invoked the most Holy Trinity, called the archangel Saint Michael to his aid, and expired while saying these words: *Mitis atque festivus Christi Jesu mihi aspectus appareat*: "May the face of the Lord Jesus be sweet and joyful to me." It was July 14 of the year 1614; he was sixty-five years, one month, and twenty days old. He was buried near the high altar of the church of Saint Mary Magdalene. Several miracles having occurred at his tomb, his body was raised from the earth and placed under the altar itself. It has since been enclosed in a shrine. A separate reliquary contains his foot, which still bears the deep imprint of the ulcer of which we have spoken. This foot is well preserved and without any corruption. Benedict XIV beatified the servant of God in 1742 and canonized him in 1746.

He is often represented assisted by angels: this is because the angels very often helped him miraculously. One day, l ost on his Benoît XIV Pope who beatified Jerome Emiliani. way, he was led back by an angel; another time, he was held back by angels during a dangerous fall. Saint Philip Neri saw angels working with the disciples of this saint to prepare the sick for death. — He is also represented at his final moments, when Our Lord came to receive his soul. — He is also seen before a crucifix that detaches its arms from the cross to embrace him and encourage him to pursue his charitable projects.

His life was written in Italian by Cicatello Cicatello Disciple and biographer of Camillus. , his disciple. The Abbé Duras provided an excellent summary of it in the new edition of Ribadeneira; we have reproduced it here, often using the same terms.