The Art of Living and the Art of Dying in St. Camillus de Lellis

  However for some decades now they have been spoken about and written about a great deal, and perhaps this is due to a natural swinging back of the pendulum in the movement of human thought. It was above all starting in the 1970s that literary and scientific production on the subject intensified, indicating the interest that the subject generated in society and contemporary culture.

From a rapid look at the literature in the field, one may observe that what most provoked the attention of scholars was the ambivalent attitude of our society towards death: on the one hand it removes it from the conscious horizon of its thought and, on the other, it turns it into a spectacle.

Bearing in mind this ambiguity of the attitude of contemporary man towards this capital event of our lives, this paper starts with the belief that the attitude one has towards death depends in large measure – or completely – on the attitude that one has towards life.

As a fundamental approach, I will use an observation made some years ago by the admired Bible expert, Heinz Schuermann. Wanting to describe the way in which Jesus of Nazareth experienced his own death, he observed that ‘every man at the end of his life addresses his own life; and this is that much more personal the more his life has been authentic and rich. In this sense’, added the distinguished scholar of Bochum, ‘one can without doubt speak about the death of Jesus as an ‘absolutely personal’ event for him. Indeed, when one thinks of what his life was one cannot but think that Jesus addressed his death – which was his destiny as it is for every man – in an attitude of authenticity and self-giving in a unique way, namely a completely personal way. Thus this death offers us the highest model that can be imagined of a human attitude open to the personal transcendence of God’.

The author thus sees an intrinsic nexus between ways of living and ways of dying: the more personal living has been, the more personal dying will be, to the point that in dying one completes and one fully reveals how one has lived. But the opposite statement that the more personal death is, the more personal life has been, is also true. From this point of view, how one dies very often (if not always) becomes the indicative sign of how one has lived.

I will place myself in a specific line of approach in order to illuminate the attitude of a man/woman of faith who believes in Jesus Christ and who after a certain fashion is committed to living according to his or her own religious beliefs. I will take as an example the living and dying of St. Camillus de Lellis. It is clear that the experience of this saint belonged to an epoch very distant from our own and one that was culturally characterised by other parameters and values. But perhaps it is this distance in time and culture that will help us to rediscover, or consolidate, our style of living, and thus also of living in a responsible way when the ‘hour of our death’ comes.

The dying of Camillus was accurately narrated by his first and contemporary biographer, Father Sanzio Cicatelli.

The Death of Camillus According to the Pen of his First Biographer

‘It was already one thirty in the night when after being asked by his nurse if he wanted to refresh himself somewhat with a little broth he answered: wait another quarter of an hour and then I will take be restored.

     And thus it happened in this way; because after not more than a quarter of an hour had passed, spreading out his arms in a cross, always having in his mouth and his heart the Most Holy name of Mary, blessing also the most Holy Trinity and St. Michael the Archangel, while the words were read Mitis atque festivus Christi Iesu tibi aspectus appareat, giving out his last breaths, with a happy face and with his eyes towards Heaven, without any horror or other transformation of his face, which seemed rather to shine, he went to be restored in Heaven, commending his soul to his creator; all of us were present, weeping and praying for his happy passage.

Go therefore in peace, blessed soul, just as here on Earth you did so much mercy to your neighbour, so also may the compassionate God do mercy to you, giving you in Heaven a place of calm, of light and of peace!

He passed away on 14 July 1614’.

Camillus had prepared his death well. He knew its date – he was going to die on the feast day of St. Bonaventure, namely 14 July – as he said on a number of occasions both in Rome and elsewhere. He had been to Bucchianico, the town where he was born, where he had openly declared that he would die in Rome. His fellow townsmen wanted him to end in his life in their town, next to the tomb of his mother. However Camillus had explicitly declared: ‘My hometown, remember what I have taught you, because we will not see each other again. I, indeed, am going to Rome, because I will die in that holy city…I hope to die in Rome and I will leave my bones in that holy city’.

In Genoa as well, a city that he greatly loved and which he had visited more than twenty times – ‘a city that he had always loved and commended for the great charity and liberality of those ladies and gentlemen towards the religious and towards the poor of the hospitals’– they tried to make him remain the last time that he went there (1613). Indeed, his health had greatly deteriorated and to the point that ‘he was reduced to very great weakness and debility’. Many of those gentlemen asked him ‘to stay in Genoa: he answered: I have to go and die in Rome, because that is the will of God’.

When he finally reached Rome on 13 October 1613 he entered the house ‘as a presage that in that house his burial would take place, and completely glad he said: Haec est requies mea. I have come to leave my bones here’. Very quickly Camillus realised that his state of health had deteriorated: ‘Once after gathering people together in his presence, after speaking about many things, he finally ended in the following way: gentlemen, I have taken so many remedies in Naples, as I have done in Genoa and in Rome, and with all of that no improvement can be seen to my malady; so I say that we do not know the secrets of God; who knows whether the Lord wants me to suffer something for love of Him? And when will we do something good if we do not do it now, at the end of life? And then the next day it was reported to him that his physicians had concluded that his malady could well go on for a long time and that he would not recover from that infirmity, Camillus being happy about this said: Laetatus sum in his quae dicta sunt mihi, in domum Domini ibimus. Indeed, given that the Superior of the house had come to visit him, he asked him how he was and he replied that he was well and happily very well because he had the good news that soon he would journey and travel to heaven, given that his physicians had concluded that he could go on for a long time but that he would not recover; in saying this he had a very happy and serene face, which well demonstrated in him a certain and steady hope of going to enjoy the goods of eternal life’.

His illness got rapidly worse. Everything rapidly deteriorated in the month of July 1614. Cicatelli narrates events as follows: ‘As Camillus knew that every day his malady was getting much worse, he began to make many requests to be given the last sacraments…so that with the help of these he could more confidently begin the journey and more valorously fight every insult of the common enemy…on the second day of July 1614…Cardinal Ginnasio, after celebrating Holy Mass, presented the most holy Eucharist to Camillus who after saying three times the customary words Domine non sum dignus, shedding many tears added: my Lord, I confess that I have not done anything good and that I am a miserable sinner, and there remains to me nothing else but the hope of your divine mercy and your compassionate blood. After then eating that most sweet bread of the angels, he prayed from some time in the company of all the fathers and brothers who, standing around his bed, were pained to see their most beloved Father set himself to depart from their eyes’. After receiving the sacrament of the anointing of the sick as well, he asked the permission of the Father General to be able to address ‘some few words’ to his religious brothers. He exhorted them in keep alive their fervour of charity towards the sick and to live united to one another; not to lose heart in the face of the difficulties that they would always encounter in the exercise of their ministry; and to love their Institute which, as a small little plant, despite the persecutions, ‘would grow and spread throughout the world and very good people would enter it’. He was going to follow them from heaven. And he ended that ‘as their Father’ he gave to his present and future sons a ‘thousand blessings’.

To some gentlemen who had come to visit him, he had it said to them that as he had received the holy sacraments he wanted ‘to retire for a while within himself…One only dies once and I have to arrange to die well, and this I hope to do with the help of my Lord’.

On a number of occasions during this last illness of his, which had greatly weakened him, ‘he was seen by our religious engaging in sweet conversations with the Lord’, at times looking at the picture of the crucified Christ and at time looking at the picture of the Virgin Mary.

He began the last day of his life, which was Monday 14 July, by taking part in the Holy Mass which he himself had asked for because that morning they were late in beginning the celebration: ‘Hearing the clock strike he asked what time it was and he was told that it was twelve o’clock, and he went on: so late and nobody talks about saying Mass? And yet for me there will be nothing else; this will be the last that I will hear’.

     To the physician who came to visit him and who asked him how he felt, he replied: ‘I am waiting in a little while the call of the Lord’.

   ‘When the Hail Mary was heard at midday he greeted the Virgin…then hearing the clock strike once again he in the same way asked what time it was and after being told that it was seven o’clock he said: how long this day is: very greatly he awaited the evening so that he could be freed of the ties of the flesh and go to rest in heaven with Christ’.

What ‘face’ of death was manifested here? How did Camillus ‘live’ his death and his dying?

One is struck by the serenity that emerges from the whole framework in which the dying of Camillus took place. And this does not take anything away from the seriousness and dramatic character of the event. Death is understood as the most important step – or passage – of life. On it depends the eternal destiny of the person who dies. There is full awareness in Camillus of this aspect. The dramatic dimension of death emerges from this awareness and it is expressed as a tension between the intense joy that Camillus proves at the thought that he will soon enter eternal life and his view of his unworthiness for such a gift, as a result of which he appeals solely to the mercy of his Lord.

Another tension dominates the whole scene and this is the intense wish to be always with his Lord whom he has served here in earth in the sick poor. From the moment he learns of the irreversibility of his illness, everything tends towards, and one would say hurries towards, the reaching of his destination. And not because of fear of the suffering that can accompany his decline but only because of a yearning to ‘to go and rest in heaven with Christ’. There is, therefore, in Camillus a certainty of eternal life which consists of always being with the Lord. He is well aware that death does not close a person to life; indeed, it introduces that personal finally to its fullness.

The intermediate space, between waiting for the ‘call’ and its completion is completely occupied by the ‘sweet conversations’ that Camillus has with God the Father and with the Son on his crucifix, and with the Mary Virgin to intercede with her Son.

He neither forgets nor neglects to complete what has been his mission on earth: service to the sick poor through the institution of a religious Order. From this concern bubble up the essential words that he addresses to his sons who are gathered around his bed; his ‘testamentary letter’ which he addresses to his sons of the present and the future – in which through an expression of his last will is set down his thinking, or to put it better his ‘passion’, for the ‘poor of our Lord’ which has dominated him for the whole of his life; and lastly the ‘spiritual testament’ which reveals the most intimate fibres of his spirituality and which he wanted to be interred together with his body.

But perhaps the aspect that most strikes today’s observer in front of this magnificent picture is the centrality of the figure of the dying Camillus: attention is essentially directed towards the dying man, and the other figures and other events only emerge as a reflection. Indeed, he alone is the protagonist of the whole event. The other figures, their feelings, their concerns and their sadness, are a frame for Camillus who dominates the scene in an absolute way, for a man who arranges everything and manages in an absolutely personal way his own death. The strong personality of Camillus, carved by his tireless commitment to carrying out his mission, receives in death the definitive touch which by now characterises him for ever, namely for eternity and not only for our time, as one who gave himself completely ‘to the sick poor of our Lord’ or, which is the same thing, was ‘given to serve the Lord Jesus Christ in the sick poor’.

This in my view is the aspect that marks out the dying of Camillus compared to the death and the dying of the man of our time.

Dying Between Tenderness and Hope

One does not want to go against science and inevitable socio-cultural changes. One nonetheless seeks a new way by which to live one’s own dying and to manage the most important step in life, which is death. This applies in a singular way to believers in Christ whose faith is characterised by believing in the ‘Crucified Christ who is the Risen Christ’ and who is alive and at work in order to unfurl all the vitalising power of his resurrection. Believers in Christ also have the duty to bear witness to this truth which is the essence of the ‘good news’ of the gospel message.

Some observations can be offered to us here by Camillus’ way of dying as it is reported. What kind of a man emerges from this narrative?

Camillus lives a deep interior life, as is borne out by his praying, by his wanting ‘to withdraw into himself’ in order to assimilate the contents of the sacramental act that he has experienced, and by his belief in the hope of a future life where he will be ‘with Christ’ for ever. For this reason he is free to decide about himself and his dying, to deliver himself up to the merciful love of He whose ‘call’ he is awaiting, and he decides on this amply on his own in his ‘testament’. The ‘testamentary letter’, together with the words that he addresses to the religious who have gathered around his bed, demonstrate at one and the same time both the care that he continues to have for the work that he has undertaken and his self-giving, the giving of his life that has been for God and the needy sick, working so that this service lasts in time after his death.

This way of dying is the outcome of an entire life journey. The existence of Camillus developed, after a tearaway, rowdy and confused youth, in extreme consistency with what he had perceived following the moments that he called his ‘conversion’ of 2 February 1575. After the words that had been spoken to him by the father who was a guardian of the friary of the Capuchins of S. Giovanni Rotondo, and while the next morning he was going down the mule track that led to Manfredonia, ‘he was suddenly assaulted from heaven by a ray of interior light that was so great for his miserable state that to his great tribulation he appeared to have his whole heart in pieces, and broken by pain, and not being able because of the unusual emotion that he felt inside himself to keep mounted, he fell to the ground in the middle of the path. Kneeling down on a stone he began with unusual pain and tears that rained from his eyes to weep bitterly for his past life. Saying with words interrupted with many sobs: O miserable and unhappy me, what great blindness has mine been to not know before my Lord? Why have I not spent all my life in serving him? Forgive me Lord, forgive this great sinner. Give me at least some space for true penitence and to be able to take so much water from my eyes as to be enough to wash away the stains and the ugliness of my sins’.

Camillus used the rest of life to understand and actuate the plan that God had for him – to serve the needy poor through the foundation of a religious institute – the Ministers of the Sick. This was a life, therefore, that was lived with impassioned love for the Crucified Christ who was loved and served in suffering people. This was an existence that was eminently ‘dialogical’, which took place, that is to say, in a continuous dialogue with the Crucified Christ so that he could illuminate him in carrying forward what Christ himself defined as ‘his work’ and not the work of Camillus. This was an existence that was totally open to the ‘transcendence’ of the God of Jesus Christ and for this reason ‘open to hope’ in the resurrection.

The existence of Camillus unfolds around three main lines which illuminate the meaning of his dying. First of all, the certainty of eternal life, which opens up to the full only after death. Death is thus read as a ‘passage’, the supreme moment of the transformation of the disciple of Christ which began with baptism and ended with viaticum which leads on the kingdom of God, as we find in the letter to the Colossians (2:12): ‘For when you were baptised, you were buried with Christ, and in baptism you were also raised with Christ’. Death, therefore, in the Christian vision of existence, is ‘behind us’, it has ‘already’ taken place, whereas in front of us there is only resurrection, with the fullness of life that it involves.

Secondly, the whole of the existence of Camillus is marked by his ‘conversations’ with the Crucified Christ, the Virgin Mary, St. Michael the Archangel, the saints…He takes seriously the recommendation of the apostle: ‘You have been raised to life with Christ, so set your hearts on the things that are in heaven, where Christ sits on his throne…Keep you minds fixed on things there (Col 3:1). It is certainly the case that the natural eye, that is to say the eye without faith, does not see this reality, but faith perceives it well, it ‘knows’ that our ‘life is hidden with Christ in God. Your real life is Christ and when he appears, then you too will appear with him and share his glory’ (Col 3:3). Faith in the resurrection matures on the terrain of an authentic encounter with God, of ceaseless dialogue with Him, with a life organised around this intimate and personal relationship with the Lord.

   Lastly, Camillus actuates his life in a constant approach of loving service for the sick poor. He lives totally decentred from himself in order to be completely ‘centred’ in Christ, whom he sees in the person who is in need of care and tenderness. This is an ex-stasis approach, that is to say being ‘outside oneself’, not ‘concerned’ with oneself but entirely directed and attentive to ‘another self’. In this case, as well, Camillus takes seriously the statement of the gospel: ‘Whoever tries to save his own life will lose it; whoever loses his life will save it’ (Lk 17:33).

An acute scholar of the human mind who was extremely sensitive to the problems of the man of today – Dr. Viktor Frankl – reached the same conclusion when reflecting on the conditions that make the life of man ‘successful’, fulfilled. Using a different language, Frankl observed that man achieves his fulfilment only by ‘auto-transcending himself’, that is to say by committing himself to something, to someone, other than himself. If, on the other hand, he strives to look for his own fulfilment, his own happiness, directly, then he is condemned to never finding it.

And thus learning and the gospel agree in affirming and clarifying the same truth which is fundamental for the understanding and the fulfilment of human existence. This was the ‘art of living’ of Camillus which predisposed him to his very personal ‘art of dying’. Indeed, it should be said that the death of Camillus was the most complete expression of his art of living.

Fr. Giuseppe Cinà, M.I.