The Charism of St. Camillus

Camillian religious this year (2013-4) are commemorating the fourth centenary of the death of their Founder, St. Camillus de Lellis, which took place on 14 July 1614. This event is a good reason to describe, albeit briefly, the charism of St. Camillus which throws light on the mandate given by Jesus to all believers: ‘go and do you likewise’. The first idea of Camillus was to create a ‘company of good men who not for gain but for love of God will care for the sick’. The first programme of these volunteers for the health of the sick was established in the first ‘rules of the company of the servants of the sick’: to serve the sick out of love for God; without payment; with the tenderness that mothers usually have for their sick only children; seeing in the poor and the sick the person of the Lord; allowing themselves to be guided by the promptings of the Holy Spirit and with the greatest respect for the freedom of patients. St. Camillus was ‘the initiator of a new school of charity’. In the complex universe of suffering he affirmed anew the urgent need to place the person at the centre of things.

The happy phrase of St. Camillus which saw the sick as ‘lords and masters’ called on his followers, whom he first wanted to call ‘servants of the sick’, to provide a ‘complete service’ which envisaged the humblest and most onerous forms of work as well: a kind of ‘madness of service’. The ‘servants’ then became the ‘ministers of the sick’ with the placing of that right sense of limits that takes into account what a human being can really do. He continued to say that the ‘ministers of the sick’ had to know how to get their hands dirty, without fleeing from what Camilus called the ‘golden gloves of charity’ To these evocative suggestions he added another which was intense and accurate and which he addressed to his religious: ‘more heart in those hands’, because professionalism and competence had to be supplemented and supported by a deep and beautiful humanity. Only in this way could one care for the other and his or her needs. Indeed, Camillus wanted his religious, imbued with mercy, to be attentive to those who suffered – to the dying, the sick and the elderly, to the infirm and the plague-stricken, to those who were downcast and sad, to those who lived in social shame, the homeless, the poor, and to those who felt alone because of a lack of love or because they were unable to love. He loved to repeat the phrase: ‘my rest and my comfort is to come to the help of the unhappy and the abandoned’.

Throughout his life he tried to grow in that inner and profound mercy from which he drew his own message of compassion. The time of his young years when he had been a gambler and a soldier, a time that was bizarre and shallow, in perennial contradiction with himself, he never forgot. He wept about it every day, just as every day he renewed his trust in  merciful God. The characteristic of true charity, for him as for us today, is to know how to find ever new forms by which to meet the needs that have always existed but which require that changes in mentalities and needs are also taken into account.

The Camillians have been present in Trento since 1980 but it seemed two years ago that the time had come to withdraw once and from all from this city. The Camillians have been present and active for about thirty years with the activities of Fr. Beppino Taufer, the head of the therapeutic communities for the mental ill – ‘Maso S. Pietro’ and ‘Maso tre castagni’ in Pergine – but there was also a need and wish for a broader initiative and a further immersion in the local Church. The Provincial Superior of the new Province of Italy, Fr. Vittorio, accompanied by Don Rino Cozza, the episcopal vicar for consecrated life, asked for hospitality from the bishop, making available a number of religious who, in cooperation with the diocesan bodies working in the field of care for sick people, could express the charism of St. Camillus. The establishment of the community took place on 14 July 2011.

In recent years it has been possible to encounter and meet the people of the parish, of the social services, of the voluntary associations, and the reference figures of the civic and ecclesiastical institutions. Since October 2013 there have been three Camillian religious in Trento: Fr. Renzo, who works as a spiritual assistant and is a part of the chaplaincy of the S. Chiara Hospital; Fr. Beppino, the director of the therapeutic communities of Perine; and Br. Lino, who for the most part works in the parish of the Sacred Heart, where he bears witness to the Camillian charism ‘of mercy’ in people’s homes. In particular, Br. Lino, through his service and as extraordinary minister for holy communion, for sick or elderly people, has been able to observe the resources and the needs of the people of the local area. In particular, he has received from people whom he visits the request to highlight faith through human relationships that are full of listening and nearness. The wish to express this service as well has its point of departure in the heart of the charism of St. Camillus who invited his followers to visit the sick in their homes where at times they experience difficulties that nobody sees. ‘Whereas hospitals are a great sea for us, serving Christ in the sick,  homes are an infinite ocean’, said St. Camillus, specifically in order to point out that one should also reach those sick people who at times live alone: their suffering, more than being physical, is psychological in character.

It is to be hoped that the parish communities, through the cooperation of a large number of people, will offer themselves as a space in which to live, and to bring out, the beautiful face of being the Church. The invitation to live a service of charity in harmony with the charism of charity is extended to us by the people that we encounter every day, in hospitals, in their homes, in the street, and in care institutions. I believe that today it is the Church communities which are most in need of the daily presence of animators of mercy, witnesses to the humanised force of the Gospel, rather than the institutions of the Institute. I am thinking, based on what in part has been my experience,  of an increasingly communicative presence at the side of the terminally ill and their family relatives.

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