From: rich <
richarra@gmail.com>
July 14th - Saint Camillus De Lellis, Confessor
c.1550-1614
GOD can make a saint out of any kind of raw material. Out of the sort
of life that breeds criminals came Saint Camillus. His mother had died
when he was a child, and he grew up absolutely neglected. An
illiterate giant, over six-and-a-half feet tall, he became a soldier
in the service of Naples and later of Venice. From the beginning, his
career as a soldier was handicapped by an overpowering addiction to
gambling, which kept him penniless. When he was reduced to taking a
job as a servant at the Hospital of San Giacomo at Rome, he was
dismissed for unruliness.
God thus allowed Camillus to reach the depths of poverty and shame, so
that, having nothing of this earth to cling to, he would turn entirely
to his Creator. While working as a laborer on the new Capuchin
buildings at Manfredonia, he was so moved by the preaching of one of
the friars that he fell on his knees in tears, deploring his past
life. From the time of his conversion at the age of 25, he never
ceased to do penance. Camillus was not permitted to make his vows
after being admitted to the novitiate of the Capuchins because of an
unhealed wound, a souvenir of the Battle of Lepanto, which had formed
painful abscesses on one leg.
He therefore returned to the Hospital of San Giacomo to work among the
sick, and especially the dying. So intense was his zeal that he was
appointed superintendent of the hospital. It was clear to Camillus
that the laymen working at the hospitals were very slack, and he
determined to found an order of men who would tend the sick out of
charity. To further this end, he received holy orders and, in 1584,
left the hospital to found the Fathers of a Good Death, later called
the Ministers of the Sick.
The members of the order vowed to devote themselves to the
plague-stricken, both in hospitals and in homes. Pope Sixtus V
approved the congregation in 1586, and Pope Gregory XIV erected it as
a mendicant religious order in 1591. As the congregation spread,
Camillus founded many hospitals. In 1595 and 1601, he sent some of his religious with the papal troops into Hungary and Croatia; these men,
clad in black habits marked with a red cross, staffed the first field
hospital of modern times, the forerunner of the Red Cross.
A man's last moments are the most precious in his life. On them
depends his eternal destiny. Camillus condemned the careless lack of
attention to the spiritual needs of patients, and dedicated himself to
the dying. He disposed them to receive the last sacraments with the
most perfect fervor and to make their death a voluntary sacrifice to
God. Afflicted with many physical sufferings himself, Camillus would
leave his own bed to serve the dying. He resigned the generalship of
his order in 1607, so that he might have more leisure to serve the
poor. He founded religious houses throughout Italy and sent his
subjects to all places afflicted with the plague.
In Genoa, on July 14, 1614, at the age of 64, he died. Just before his
death, when he knew the end was near, Camillus spoke: "I rejoiced
because they said to me, 'We will go up to the house of the Lord'."
(Ps. 121:1)."O Lord, I confess I am the most wretched of sinners, most undeserving of Thy favor; but save me by Thy infinite goodness." He
was canonized by Pope Benedict XIV in 1746, and was declared patron of
the sick (along with Saint John of God) by Pope Leo XIII. He was named
patron of nurses and nursing associations by Pope Pius XI. In every
suffering man Camillus had seen Christ and served Him.
This Version taken from:
http://www.geocities.com/barats2000/JulyFeast.html
Saint Quote:
But those who say that there was a time when the Son or the Holy
Spirit was not, or was made out of nothing or of another substance or
essence, who say the Son of God or the Holy Spirit is liable to change
or to becoming different, these people the Catholic and Apostolic
Church, your Mother and ours, anathematizes; and again we
anathematize those who do not confess the resurrection of the dead,
and all heresies which are not consistent with this, the true faith.
-- Saint Epiphanus of Salamis
Bible Quote
Jesus said to them: Because of your unbelief. For, amen I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you shall say to this mountain, Remove from hence hither, and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible to you. (Matthew 17:19) DRB
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A prayer for the sick to Saint Camillus de Lellis:
O glorious Saint Camillus, special patron of the sick poor, thou who for
forty years, with truly heroic charity, didst devote thyself to the relief
of their temporal and spiritual necessities, be pleased to assist them now
even more generously, since thou art blessed in heaven and they have been committed by Holy Church to thy powerful protection. Obtain for them from Almighty God the healing of all their maladies, or, at least, the spirit of Christian patience and resignation that may sanctify them and comfort them
in the hour of their passing to eternity; at the same time obtain for us
the precious grace of living and dying after thine example in the practice
of divine love. Amen.
Our Father... Hail Mary... Glory be...
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