If one wanted to provide a summary of the presence of Mary Salus Infirmorum in the spiritual experience of St. Camillus, it seems to me that it developed along the following three lines:

The conversion to God which took place on the day on the day of the Presentation to the Temple of the newly-born Saviour, and the Purification of his Mother Mary, inscribed in the life of St. Camillus the certainty that this occurred through her maternal intercession.

   The day of his salvation, because of a special gift of God, was linked to the memory of the announcement that the life of the Mother was intimately involved with the life of her Son Jesus on the way of the Cross, for the total reintegration of Man. This historical event led Camillus to place in his spirituality – which was fundamentally Christocentric – the mystery of Mary the Immaculate Conception as an icon of redemption.

Our Mater Dolorosa, who beneath the Cross received from her Son as a bequest the creatures of all epochs, in the Marian dimension of Camillus acquired the title Our Lady of Health Care – Salus Infirmorum – in which was expressed to the full the maternal tenderness of the Mother of the Word made Flesh, ‘who desires all men to be saved’ (1 Tim 2,4), bringing them to the reintegration of total health.

F.R.