[To see the photo gallery click here] We are in a place that is unique for Camillians. This is the place where the mortal remains of our holy Founder lie and this is a house full of special memories as regards the history of our Order. In December 1586 our brothers entered this house which at that time had attached to it the small Church of St. Mary Magdalene.
The idea of creating a group of good people for a better exercise of service to the sick had been born in the mind of Camillus some four years previously. But its roots are to be identified in the day of his conversion. Since then he had become a new person: he decided that his life had to be totally dedicated to God. This determination continued to inhabit his heart even though the affliction to his leg became an insurmountable obstacle to his remaining with the Capuchins.
The idea of a company of good people could also have been wrecked by the strong forms of opposition to it. However, by the crucifix – with which he had an intimate daily relationship – he was ‘animated and consoled’ by words that would remain engraved with fire in the spirit of our Founder: ‘Go forward fearlessly because this is my work not yours’. That crucified Christ who extended his arms towards him is still in this house, next to the heart of our founder. And it continues to infuse so much strength and comfort into our Order as it continues with this divine work.
Thus by the clear will of God, this Camillian community was born.
When entering this house our imagination is spontaneously activated by the wish to be able to observe – as in a kind of film/documentary – what Camillus and his first companions did here. The various accounts that have been handed down to us help us in the reconstruction, which is certainly partial, of how this first Camillian community lived charity towards the poor and the sick, with its special characteristics which distinguished it from the other communities that were present in Rome at that time.  In outlining the profiles of that community I will refer to what was written by the much lamented Superior General, Father Calisto Vendrame.
It was a community: which was charismatic, made up of people inspired by God who had decided to die unto themselves in order to live solely in Jesus Christ; which was composed of people who found the source of their spirituality, as our Constitution states, ‘in the presence of Christ in the sick’; which was new and of very great contemporary relevance which met the challenges of time and place in a creative way. A community that was believed by everyone to be necessary because, both in hospitals and in homes, it was concerned with overall service to the sick as its principal purpose; which was  involved in expanding its field of action without any hesitation: these religious were ready and willing to act anywhere there was a grave need (pestilence, typhus, famine, flooding, war). A community open to the local and universal Church, to all the needs of sick people and also to working with lay people. Camillus not only encouraged many faithful to devote themselves to the sick but also established the Congregation of the Most Holy Crucifix (1592), giving them a room here in the house of Mary Magdalene, to share with his religious in serving the sick, and he designed a diploma for the aggregation of the Order to the so-named ‘Congregation of the Seculars’ (18 February 1594).
This community was also made up of people who served the poorest with the love of a mother, with all their strength and for no payment. The poor did not have to knock on the door of that community: the doors were always thrown open for them, above all in times of famine or epidemic. The courtyard, here at the side of the church, was a witness to the presence of very many people in need. ‘Greatly moved by compassion Camillus (in particular hearing the cries at night of poor people in the street who asked for a mouthful of bread)…ordered that in the house every day a large cauldron of soup was to be prepared, of grain, of rice, of beans or some suchlike. Then in bringing together in the courtyard as many poor people as he could…he had them given soup, a piece of bread, and a cup of wine for each one of them, that is to say what seemed to him to be required to prevent them from dying of hunger the next day, and at times these poor people were as many as four hundred in number…When sending them out he always had some of those in the worst condition stay in the home and these people, by Camillus or by others had their hair cut, were washed or clothed, being given in exchange for their stinking rags all the clothes that were found in the wardrobe’. And during epidemics – as we know – the house was also transformed into a refuge for sick people.
For the religious of that community, however, it was not enough to receive the poor and the sick. They perceived that it was necessary to go and look for them or, as Camillus observed, dig them up from underground. Anyway to visit them in their miserable shacks or even in grottos ‘where’, as we are told by Cicatelli, ‘[our brothers] went, wearing each one his apron and a tin cup on his belt, they went from door to door handing out that charity of wine, meat, chickens, eggs…and everything else that was needed. Giving food to eat to the most seriously sick with their own hands, according to what the physicians said. After they had fed them, they made their beds, washed dishes, swept the house and bandaged their little children whose crying and pallor would have made any harsh heart weep’.
This was a community where joy and enthusiasm could almost be touched, albeit in the severity of the exercise of the charism; which reserved a great deal of time to being together, to pray and to reflect with passion on important things; which was international, being made up of Italians, Spaniards, Frenchmen, Irishmen, Englishmen and Flemings; which was a poor community, made up of people detached from all economic self-interest;  which was a community that met the aspirations of a large number of young people who finally found in it full meaning for their lives. Cicatelli tells us: ‘not only young noblemen, students and young people from good backgrounds entered the Congregation but also men who were already priests and learned men who could immediately put their hands to the wheel and work in this holy vineyard’  And they were so many in number that in this house there was no longer enough room to accommodate them all.
This is how we can imagine that community. Certainly, then, as well, there was no lack of internal and external problems but these were faced up to and overcome because our brothers were motivated by an uncontainable passion for Christ and for suffering humanity. One wish they all shared: to be able to have the privilege of dying caring for the sick! All of us know well that even during severe discussions with the Founder – on the first floor in the hall of the General Chapter – when news arrived of an epidemic they fought with each other to throw themselves at the feet of Father Camillus in order to have the grace of taking part in a feast of charity! How many of them wrote, through giving up their own lives, pages of heroic and moving charity!
In this house our brothers were witnesses to extraordinary events: such as the by-no-means rare amazing interventions of Providence or the miracles performed by Camillus himself. They watched him uncontainable, unreachable and motherly with the sick and poor; absorbed, immersed in union with God. And at times, in both cases, enveloped in ecstasy. As happened in this house. The man entrusted with  waking the religious, when he was passing by the room of Camillus early one morning was attracted by a light that came form inside it. Looking carefully inside he saw the father praying, raised up above the ground.
In the Formula for religious life we encounter the following exhortation: ‘If somebody inspired by the Lord God wants to engage in works of mercy…he should know that he has to be dead to all the things of this world – that is to say to relatives, friends and himself and live only for Jesus Christ’. And a little later on he again emphasises the same concept: ‘Everyone therefore who wants to enter our Religion should think that he has to be dead to himself…and should give everything to please the will of God’. These religious could well say with St. Paul: ‘in me no longer lives the old man, the man of the flesh: that man is dead; now I live in Christ’.
Each one of them answered positively to that question of Jesus: ‘Do you love me more than the others? Do I have the first place in your heart?’ And it was this undivided love for Jesus that allowed them to exercise works of spiritual and corporeal charity for the sick in an incredible daily heroism. Such is still the case for us today: our service for the sick is first of all an ‘answer of love to the love of God’; all other motivations would be insufficient if not, indeed, negative.
It was specifically this shared union in the only vine which is the Lord that allows a community to build relationships that are fraternal and to exercise a communal ministry that is marked by mercy towards the last.
We are called to be contemplatives in action, as our Founder was. Camillus frequently exhorted his religious to pray, to union with Gold. He repeated the following words: ‘One should always pray and never tire in doing this. Woe to that religious who is satisfied with only a hour of mental prayer in the morning, , then during the day goes around in a distracted way here and there with his mind; this man will find himself in the evening with his hands full of flies and wind’.
To be with Christ and to be of Christ is our true need and thus our first duty that we should carry out in order to remain spiritually alive and make our ministry fecund. The Blessed John Paul II observed: ‘A constant danger for apostolic workers is to make themselves so involved in their activity for the Lord as to forget the Lord in all their activity’. A lack of union with the Lord impoverishes us to such an extent as to make us unable to build a fraternal life in community and to give ourselves to others. Indeed, a lack in us of love for God fosters an abnormal growth in selfishness: this, unfortunately, is a powerful and terrible mechanism that makes one see all the people that one comes into contact with as objects to be used in order to achieve one’s own destructive goals.
Camillus recognised the merciful face of God above all else in the crucified Jesus; in him he found the concrete sign of the saving love of the Father. Christ should be loved anew with total dedication to sick poor people in whom he makes himself present, but this is possible only as a consequence of one’s own conformation to Christ himself. If one does not live in intimate union with Christ – the central and convergent point of all of our life – true service to one’s brothers and to the sick will be never be possible.
Just as Christ lowered himself to share in the destiny of man, so a Camillian must descend into the deepest contexts of suffering and illness: it is here that his identity is realised to the full, going down the pathway of descent of Christ. A Camillian does not only proclaim the words and actions of Christ, he also carries them our in a condition of life that is as near as possible to that of Christ: just as Christ emptied himself, so a Camillian will do the same, becoming the servant of everyone, and in particular of those who suffer.
That first community was made up of people who were made, by a profound spiritual life, able to behold the face of Christ; it is in this face that they saw the face of their neighbour; and thus it became easy for them to see the face itself of Christ in their brothers and in sick poor people. This is why that community welcomed and offered material and spiritual space to the poor, to the sick, to young vocations and to lay men and women of good will.
Let us therefore ask our beloved Founder and all of our first brothers to enable us imitate their total consecration to God, their commitment to building a fraternal community, and their dedication to complete service to sick people.