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July 19, 2011

 

"Charity Covereth A Multitude of Sins"

Part One

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Our first pope, Saint Peter, the rock upon whom Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus founded His one true Church, the Catholic Church, wrote the following in his first epistle, which can be seen as the first papal encyclical letter:

[1] Christ therefore having suffered in the flesh, be you also armed with the same thought: for he that hath suffered in the flesh, hath ceased from sins: [2] That now he may live the rest of his time in the flesh, not after the desires of men, but according to the will of God. [3] For the time past is sufficient to have fulfilled the will of the Gentiles, for them who have walked in riotousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and unlawful worshipping of idols. [4] Wherein they think it strange, that you run not with them into the same confusion of riotousness, speaking evil of you. [5] Who shall render account to him, who is ready to judge the living and the dead.

[6] For, for this cause was the gospel preached also to the dead: that they might be judged indeed according to men, in the flesh; but may live according to God, in the Spirit. [7] But the end of all is at hand. Be prudent therefore, and watch in prayers. [8] But before all things have a constant mutual charity among yourselves: for charity covereth a multitude of sins. [9] Using hospitality one towards another, without murmuring, [10] As every man hath received grace, ministering the same one to another: as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. (1 Peter 4: 1-10.)

 

The pull of the world is such that so many Catholics, yes, even those who consider themselves "devoted" to some manifestation of Catholic Tradition in the various warring camps of traditionalism at this time of apostasy and betrayal, believe that they can "party hardy" until the day they die and still get to Heaven.

So many Catholics believe that they can dress immodestly and speak indecently. We know women who go to traditional chapels who swear like sailors, justifying themselves to others as they do so by boasting that they have taught their children to "defend" themselves with the use of words that would never pass from the lips of the Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and wound the the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, to say nothing of scandalizing young children, whose innocence and purity are so near and dear to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and His Blessed Mother's Immaculate Heart, who are within earshot of such terribly debasing profanities and vulgarities. No, what "matters" is to "get one's point across" in the most emphatic terms possible no matter who is offended, including God.

So many other Catholics are suborned in their riotous living, sometimes by traditional clergymen, as they immerse themselves in every aspect of the rot and the horror of popular culture imaginable. "You have to meet people where they are," is the rationalization--and it is nothing other than that--that some some traditional clergymen offer to those scandalized by their refusal to elevate the sheep from where they are to exhort and inspire them to the heights of spiritual perfection, starting with an eschewing of the world and worldliness. "Oh, this is not possible. You'll turn them away. You'll turn them off. You'll never see them again. Just leave them be. Let them remain in good faith."

There is a little problem with this. No one can get to Heaven by being immersed in the ways of the world, by dressing immodestly or by speaking in such scandalously indecent terms that the innocence and purity of children who have not been exposed to vulgarity and profanity are undermined, if not ruined forever. No one can be left in "good faith" over the course of the long term as they live lives of riotousness and partying unbeftting creatures whose immortal souls have been redeemed by the shedding of every single drop of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus. It is to deny the efficacy of the graces won for us on Calvary by the shedding of that same Precious Blood to insist that it is best not to "disturb" people "where they are," and it is to make a mockery of the saintly examples given us by those who have been raised to the altars by Holy Mother Church to inspire us to quit our sins and our worldliness and to seek to make reparation for them.

Three of the Spiritual Works of Mercy require us to instruct the ignorant, counsel the doubting and admonish the sinner. No one can claim that he is serving the interests of Christ's Holy Church and thus of the sanctification and salvation of the souls for whom He shed His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross by refusing to admonish the sinner, and those who are steeped in worldliness are indeed sinners in need of admonition and instruction.

Obviously, there are different ways to do this. Each person is different. Each person has a different background. Each person has a different set of sins that have darkened his intellect, weakened his will and disordered the balance between his higher rational faculties and his lower sensual passions.  It might take time and a great deal of patience direction and encouragement to convince someone steeped in a spirit of worldliness and various compromises with modesty and decency that Our Lady warned us would be the downfall and thus the ruin of many souls (for a review of the true teaching of the Catholic Church on modesty of dress, please read Father Martin Stepanich's irrefutable treatise on the matter, published in The Remnant in 1972, and found in various articles on this site, including in an appendix found after the text of Revolutions Have Consequences, part two) to amend his life.

No matter the time and patience required to exhort a worldly person to amend his life, efforts must be made to convince him to do so, no matter how gentle and gradual those efforts might be in their initial stages. It is a sin to leave someone steeped in worldliness and worldly self-indulgence. One cannot grow in a true love of God and thus of the Holy Faith if he is living such a life. One cannot embrace a spirit of prayer, penance and self-denial if he is reaffirmed to live as a partisan of the world rather than as a counter-cultural soldier in the Army of Christ the King.

Different saints, each with their own various temperaments and gifts, sought to divest themselves of what was disordered in their personalities so as to be better able to convert non-Catholics but also to inspire worldly and lukewarm Catholics to amend their lives.

Some of these saints, such as Saint Vincent Ferrer and Saint John Mary Vianney (see Saint Vincent Ferrer and Anti-Saint Vincent Ferrers and Serving Souls to the Point of Death), used the pulpit to preach the truths of the Faith with firm conviction. So did Saint Francis Solanus (see Trying to Get Our Attention), who, though patient with the Indians, who understood him in their own native languages even though he spoke to them in Spanish, railed against the sinful, lukewarm lives of the Spanish residents of Lima, Peru, in a famous sermon wherein he predicted the earthquake that took place in Trujillo, Peru, a short thereafter in the year 1618. Saint Alphonsus de Liguori used the pulpit to preaches the truths of the Faith, emphasizing in a particular way that there can be no compromise at all with the spirit of the world:

But, how much soever the worldling may be distracted by his worldly affairs and by his pleasures--how much soever he may be entangled in them, St. Chrysostom says, that, when the fear of death, which sets fire to all things of the present life, begins to enter the soul, it will compel him to think and to be solicitous about his lot after death. "Cum pulsare animam incipit metus mortis (ignis instar praesentis vitae omnia succendens) philosophari eam cogit, et futura solicita mente versari" serm. in II. tim.--Isa., xxxv. 5. Then indeed shall be opened the eyes of those blind worldlings who have employed their whole life in acquiring Earthly goods, and have paid but little attention to the interests of the soul. In all these shall be verified what Jesus Christ has told them--that death shall come when they least expect it. "At what hour you think not, the Son of Man will come"--Luke, xii.--40. Thus, on these unhappy men death always comes unexpectedly. Hence, because the lovers of the world are not usually warned of their approaching dissolution till it is very near, they must, in the last few days of life, adjust the accounts of their soul for the fifty or sixty years which they lived on this Earth. They will then desire another month, or another week, to settle their accounts, and to tranquilize their conscience. But, "they will seek for peace, and there shall be none:--Ezec., vii. 25. The time which they desire is refused. The assisting priest reads the divine command to depart instantly from this world: "Proficiscere anima Christiana de hoc mundo." Depart, Christian soul, from this world. Oh! how dangerous the entrance of worldlings into eternity, dying, as they do, amid so much darkness and confusion, in consequences of the disorderly state of the accounts of their souls. . . .

All things in this world--acquisitions, applause, grandeur--must, as we have said, all end, and end very soon. "the fashion of this world passeth away"--I. Cor., vii. 31. The scene of this life passes away: happy they who, in this scene, act their part well, and save their souls, preferring the eternal interests of the soul to all the temporal interests of the body. "He that hateth his life in his world, keepeth it unto life eternal"--John, xii. 26. Worldlings say: Happy the man who hoards up money! happy they who acquire the esteem of the world, and enjoy the pleasures of this life! O folly! Happy he who loves God and saves his soul! The salvation of his soul and was the only favour which king David asked of God. "One thing have I asked of the Lord, this will I seek after"--Ps., xxvi. 4. And St. Paul said, that to acquire the race of Jesus Christ, which contains eternal life, he despised as dung all worldly goods. "I count all things as loss.......and I count them as dung, that I may gain Christ"--Phil., iii. 8.

But certain fathers of families will say: I do not labour so much for myself as for my children, whom I wish to leave in comfortable circumstances. But I answer: If you dissipate the goods which you possess, and leave our children in poverty, you do wrong, and are guilty of sin. But will you lose your soul in order to leave your children comfortable? If you call into Hell, perhaps they will come and release you from it? O folly! Listen to what David said: "I have not seen the just man forsaken, nor his seed seeking bread"--Ps., xxxvi. 25. Attend to the service of God; act according to justice; the Lord will provide for the wants of your children; and you shall save your souls, and shall lay up that eternal treasure of happiness which can never be taken from you--a treasure not like Earthly possessions, of which yo may be deprived by robbers, and which you shall certainly lose at death. This is the advice which the Lord gives you--"But lay up to yourselves treasures in Heaven, where neither the rust nor the moth doth consume, and where thieves do not break through nor steal"--Matt., vi. 20. In conclusion, attend to the beautiful admonition which St. Gregory gives to all who wish to live well and to gain eternal life. "Sit nobis in intentione aeternitas, in usu temporalitats". Let the end of all our actions in this life be, the acquisition of eternal goods; and let us use temporal things only to preserve life for the little time we have to remain on this Earth. The saint continues: "Sicut nulla est proportio inter aeternitatem et nostrae vitae tempus, ita nulla debet esse proportio inter aeternitatis, et hujus, vitae curas". As this is an infinite distance between eternity and the time of our life, so there ought to be, according to our mode of understanding, an infinite distance between the attention which we should pay to the goods of eternity, which shall be enjoyed for ever, and the care we take of the goods of this life, which death shall soon take away from us. (Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost: All Ends And Soon Ends.)

 

Saint Alphonsus de Ligouri was not content to "meet the people where they are." He strove throughout the course of his ninety-one year life to exhort them to the heights of personal sanctity. Shouldn't we want to have the highest place in Heaven possible? Shouldn't this be our goal as members of the Catholic Church? How can one get to Heaven when he rents digital video discs (DVDs) of salacious motion pictures, no less doing so while studying for the holy priesthood as is so frequently the case in the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism? Why are so many in some fully traditional Catholic venues so very sanguine about such an immersion in the world that they refuse to be horrified by lukewarmness and spiritual mediocrity while they themselves rent the motion pictures and listen to the same horrible music as their friends in the conciliar structures? What's the point of a having a "Latin Mass" while living the life of a worldling. That's what the spirit the Protestant and Masonic and Novus Ordo service was constructed to foster.

Saint John Bosco (see Zealous For Souls Until the Very End) used a variety of tactics, including outright bribery, to lead the likes of coachmen and laborers back to the Sacraments. He also used his gift of reading souls to shame a wealthy woman, steeped in her pride, into making her first true, integral confession of her sins in decades. Saint John Bosco was very patient. He was very clever.  He used his juggling and athletic skills as a young boy to get his peers to get themselves to Holy Mass and to practice the Faith.

Padre Pio was unsparing in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance, refusing to hear the confessions of women who were immodestly attired (or who dressed according to the increasingly more "liberal" standards of the "day"), calling them "clowns." Short sleeves? Pants? He also used his own ability to read souls to penetrate into the deepest recesses of sinners who thought that they could hide their sins from God. He "met people where they were"--and then he beat whipped them into shape in order to save their souls and turn them into saints.

Father Giuseppe Melchior Sarto, the future Pope Saint Pius X, used night classes to teach the blaspheming and cursing men about the cattle town of Tombolo, Italy, to read and write in exchange for their promise that they would avoid blaspheming and cursing in the future. He was, of course, the last true pope to have spent the entirety of his priesthood and episcopacy in pastoral work without having spent a single, solitary day in the diplomatic service of the Holy See (diplomatic service that made each of his three successors--Popes Benedict XV, Pius XII and Pius XII-much less direct and firm--and thus more prone to compromise on various points of diplomacy--in their governing styles than he had been).

There are, of course, other means to convert non-Catholics and to reach the hardened sinner. One of those ways involve performing the Corporal Works of Mercy as a preparation to performing the Spiritual Works of Mercy. Many of Holy Mother Church's children who worked in the mission fields or with the poor or the hospitalized or the abandoned or the abused provided food, clothing, medicine and shelter to those in temporal need, seeing in each person they served the very image of the suffering Christ.

The saint whose feast we celebrated yesterday, Monday, July 18, 2011, Saint Camillus de Lellis, is a saint who performed the Corporal Works of Mercy to serve the temporal needs of the hospitalized. He ministered unto their bodily health so that he could have an opportunity to help those to whom he tended heal their immortal souls by getting to Confession before they died.

Saint Camillus de Lellis was a saint who was "made" by God directly after a life of sin. He was a headstrong, heartless young boy who was cruel to other children. He threw a rock at a girl who told him that she was going to report his bad behavior to her parents, telling her, "Good. You can tell them about this, too!" before launching his projectile. He caused great heartache to his saintly mother, who same copious tears that Saint Monica had for her wayward son, Augustine.

There was a different, though: Saint Augustine lived a live of wanton pleasures before he was baptized while Saint Camillus de Lellis had had the benefit of infant Baptism. Camillus de Lellis simply rejected the graces that God sent to him through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces, preferring his disordered will to the love of God. There was another difference: Saint Camillus's bad behavior brought his mother to an earthly death while he was yet a young boy. This made it possible for her, purged of whatever self-love and faults she possessed, to pray for her more perfectly from eternity than she ever could while on the face of this earth. It was those prayers from our saint's mother, no doubt, that caused God to intervene directly in his life.

Camillus de Lellis gambled so much that he quite literally lost the shirt off of his back once. He would engage in fisticuffs at the drop of a hat. God had to intervene directly in his life to change it as Camillus de Lellis, despite all of his terrible sins that were driven by his pride and his anger and his greed, had been a chosen soul all along although no one looking at him prior to God's direct intervention would have known that this was so. Perhaps it wise for me to "get out of the way" in order to let Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., paint the picture with his exquisite perfection as his introduction takes us to the account of the saint's life as found in The Roman Breviary:

 

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 was 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 such 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 wherewith our heavenly Father surrounds even the members of His beloved children. I was sick, and ye visited Me, 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, Servants of 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.

The liturgical account of St. Camillus' life is so full that we need to add nothing to it:

Camillus was a born at Bachianico, a town of the diocese of Chieti. He was descended from the noble family of the Lelli, and his mother was sixty years old at the time of his birth. While she was with child with him, she dreamt that she gave birth to a little boy, who was signed on the breast with a cross, and was the leader of a band of children, wearing the same sign. As a young man he followed the career of arms, and gave himself up to a time of worldly vices, but in his twenty-sixth year he was so enlightened by heavenly grace, and seized with so great a sorrow for having offended God, that on the spot, shedding a flood of tears, he firmly resolved unceasingly to to wash away the stains of his past life, and to put on the new man. Therefore on the very day of his conversion, which happened to be the feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, he hastened to the Friars Minor, who are called Capuchins, and begged most earnestly to be admitted to their number. 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 upon his leg; wherefore he humbly submitted himself to the designs of Divine Providence, which was preparing him for greater things, and conquering himself 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 called that of the Incurables. 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, to wash them, to heal their sores, and to aid them in their last agony with his prayers and pious exhortations. In discharging those 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 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 thirty-two to return again to school and to learn the first elements of grammar among children. Being afterwards promoted in due order to the priesthood, he was joined by several companions and in spite of the opposition attempted by the enemy of the human race, laid the foundation of the Congregation of Regular Clerks, Servants of the Sick. In this work Camillus 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 themselves by a fourth and very arduous vow--namely, to minister to the sick, even those infected with the plague. St. Philip Neri, who was his confessor, attested how pleasing this institution was to God, and how greatly it contributed toward 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, he devoted himself with marvellous ardour to watching over their interest, by night and by day, till his last breath. No labour could tire him, no peril of his life could affright 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 of his own accord 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 a contagious distemper, and then from a great scarcity of provisions; and also when a dreadful plague was ravaging Nola in Campania. In a word, he 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 cold 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 bone. 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 thee with a sweet and gracious countenance." He died at Rome, at the hour he had foretold, on the day before the Ides of July, in the year of salvation 1614, the sixty-fifth of his age. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, The Liturgical Year, Volume XIII, Time After Pentecost: Book IV, pp. 126-130.)

 

Saint Camillus de Lellis may have laid aside the Franciscan habit. He lived out the spirit of Saint Francis of Assisi, however, until he had breathed his last on July 14, 1614, as it was in the spirit of the Seraphic Saint, who had led a carefree, frivolous (but not sinful) life as a youth, that our saint of charity to all who needed it regardless of their circumstances or the state of their immortal souls at the time he found them in need exhibited throughout the course of his inspirational service to the sick and the dying.

Imagine if some priest, seeing the dissolute life into which Saint Camillus de Lellis, would have said to him, "Be good to yourself. God meets you where you are. You've turned in His direction. That's enough. The Church is content with an 'average' devotional life. That's why she requires you to make your Easter duty of going to confession and receiving Holy Communion only once a year. It's all right to play games. It's all right to gamble a little bit. It's all right to drink to excess. After all, you need a little bit of 'fun' now and again, don't you. Bodily mortifications? Oh, come on, that's for another age. We're too sophisticated for that kind of stuff now. Just be happy that you've met God finally and that will be enough. Don't be so hard on yourself. God loves you just the way you are."

This, of course, is nothing that I have invented as it is what many priests and presbyters in the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism tell to truly repentant sinners who do indeed want to strive for the highest place in Heaven next to that of the Blessed Mother herself as is possible by her prayers and the graces she sends to them from her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. And, believe it or not, it is a pretty close approximation to what I have heard one or two (well, maybe even three or four or five or six) fully traditional priests say to me directly, which has prompted me to say to each as respectfully as I know how: "How is this different from the false spirit of the Novus Ordo that his premised upon the alleged 'impossibility' of the 'average' people from becoming a great saint by means of the sort of acts of charity and mortification and penance and fasting that Holy Mother Church has long held out to us as the path to Heaven." "That's just too idealistic," I've been told. "You've got to meet the people where they are."

If you "meet the people where they are" and never even attempt to exhort them to rise above their immersion in the world and worldliness, however, then lukewarmness becomes acceptance, and Our Lord Himself told Saint John the Evangelist in no uncertain terms what happens to the lukewarm as He exhorted those steeped in spiritual tepidity to reform and to live penitentially:

[16] But because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold, not hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth. [17] Because thou sayest: I am rich, and made wealthy, and have need of nothing: and know est not, that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked. [18] I counsel thee to buy of me gold fire tried, that thou mayest be made rich; and mayest be clothed in white garments, and that the shame of thy nakedness may not appear; and anoint thy eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see. [19] Such as I love, I rebuke and chastise. Be zealous therefore, and do penance. [20] Behold, I stand at the gate, and knock. If any man shall hear my voice, and open to me the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.

[21] To him that shall overcome, I will give to sit with me in my throne: as I also have overcome, and am set down with my Father in his throne. [22] He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches. (Apocalypse 3: 16-22.)

 

Our Lord knows "where we are." He knows where we are headed if we stay "where we are," and it's not a good destination. He has spoken to us in clear terms: "Be zealous therefore and, do penance" because "Such as I love, I rebuke and chastise," which is why none of us should mind it in the slightest that our precious "reputations" are "damaged" by the babblings of others behind our backs as our own sins of backbiting and gossiping deserve far worse than we can ever suffer in this life. Who cares what anyone thinks about us? Consider every blow you suffer in this life as a just chastisement and rebuke sent directly by the good God for your sanctification and salvation as His consecrated slaves through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, looking upon each soul who calls upon you for assistance, including those who may have offended you in the not-so-distant past, as your nearest living relative in Christ the King to whom you are pledged to render the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy just as you would to Our King Himself.

The prayer that Dom Prosper Gueranger wrote in honor of Saint Camillus de Lellis is worth repeating here as it more perfectly summarizes the point of part one of this three-part series than anything I could write:

Angel of charity, by what wonderful paths did the Divine Spirit lead thee! The vision of thy pious mother remained long unrealized; before taking on thee the the holy Cross and enlisting comrades under that sacred sign, thou didst serve the odious tyrant, who will have none but slaves under his standard, and the passing of gambling was wellnigh thy ruin. O Camillus, remembering the danger thou didst incur, have pity on the unhappy slaves of passion; free them from the madness wherewith they risk, to the caprice of chance, their goods, their honour, and their peace in this world and in the next. Thy history proves the power of grace to break the strongest ties and alter the most inveterate habits: may these men, like thee, 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 charity laid down His life for us: a heavenly game of chance, which thou didst play so well that the very angels applauded thee. 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 thy honour, may we all, like thee, love our brethren as Christ has loved us! Few, says St. Augustine, love another to this end, that God may be all in all. Thou, O Camillus, having this love, didst exercise it by preference towards those suffering members of Christ's mystic Body, in whom Our Lord revealed Himself more clearly to thee, and in whom His kingdom was nearer at hand. Therefore has the Church in gratitude chosen thee, together with John of God, to be the guardians 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 secularization 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 thy 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 they precious  prerogative which the holy liturgy honours to-day; help us, by the spirit of holy love, to vanquish the enemy and attain unto the heavenly crown. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, The Liturgical Year, Volume XIII, Time After Pentecost: Book IV, pp. 130-131.)

 

God found Saint Camillus de Lellis where he was: in the gutter. He did not leave him there. He showed him how to become a great saint by living these words to their fullest meaning:

[7] But the end of all is at hand. Be prudent therefore, and watch in prayers. [8] But before all things have a constant mutual charity among yourselves: for charity covereth a multitude of sins. [9] Using hospitality one towards another, without murmuring, [10] As every man hath received grace, ministering the same one to another: as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. (1 Peter 4: 7-10.)

 

Do you have a multitude of sins to cover? I do. How about praying to Saint Camillus de Lellis to help us eschew worldliness once and for all so that by our prayers, penances, fastings and mortification we may truly have hearts conformed to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary that overfloweth with unsurpassed love with such pitiable creatures as ourselves?

May every Communion we make and every Rosary we pray help to bring about a true increase of the charity of Christ the King into our immortal souls as we become more detached from the world and more attached to the joys of Heaven itself.

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?

 

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us!

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

 

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint Camillus de Lellis, pray for us.

Saint Symphorosa on her sons, pray for us.

Saint Vincent de Paul, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints

 





© Copyright 2011, Thomas A. Droleskey. All rights reserved.