This week on Friday, July 17, we celebrated the Feast of St.
Camillus de Lellis.
Many of the Saints were extremely holy throughout their
lives: St. Bernadette was a very holy and humble young girl, St. Maria Goretti
was courageously protected her chastity out of love for Jesus Christ and was martyred
at the age of twelve, the polish Jesuit novice St. Stanislaws Kostka was deeply
pious and humble. Not so with St.
Camillus. He gave his parents nothing
but trouble. He got into fights with
neighborhood boys, he skipped school, he learned, but wouldn’t say his prayers;
he was so quick to unleash his violent temper that his mother was actually
afraid of him.
At the age of seventeen, Camillus joined his father as a
mercenary soldier, and he quickly picked up a lot of the vices of the military
camps—swearing, gambling, drinking, and visiting prostitutes. He and his father, Giovanni, even teamed up
as father and son con artists, swindling their fellow soldiers. They went from camp to camp when Camillus’
father fell seriously ill.
To Camillus’ surprise, Giovanni sent him to fetch a priest,
and after Giovanni made a good confession, repenting from all his sins and
crimes, he received Holy Communion for the last time and died.
This was a turning point in Camillus’ life…sort of. He was
deeply touched by his father’s deathbed conversion. If his father, a life-long gambler and
conartist could have faith, then so could Camillus. One of his uncles was a Franciscan, so Camillus
thought he might give religious life a try.
But that didn’t last long; he soon fell into gambling again. And this
time his luck really ran out—he lost everything and became homeless.
God’s grace broke into his life when a local business owner gave
him a job doing menial construction work.
Here Camillus began to acquire two virtues he had never cultivated
before: self-discipline and responsibility.
Through work he realized his dignity.
When his construction job was done he set out for Rome to
work at the famous Hospital of San Giacomo.
There, he found great joy and his vocation in nursing the sick and
giving the desperately ill a clean, comfortable place to die. He was ordained a priest and spent the last
thirty years of his life dedicated to the sick.
What a conversion! At
many points in his life, it seemed unlikely that Camillus would come to such
great holiness. Perhaps, there are some
of us here, who like Camillus, were on the wrong path; maybe like him, we even
started off that way. Maybe, there are
members of our family who seem now trapped in an endless cycle of poor
decisions.
The life of Camillus and our Gospel this weekend remind us
that we must be patient. Everyone we
meet might be one act of kindness away from getting back on the right road
toward God.
Our Lord tells us that weeds and wheat often grow in the
same field. Even expert farmers have a
difficult time telling the difference between the two while they are still
growing. It is only at harvest time when
the two can be distinguished.
So we must be patient with everyone who is struggling to
find the right path, and not write them off.
And like the wealthy man who gave St. Camillus the job which
was the turning point in his life, we too are called to be instruments of God’s
grace in the lives of others.
A few months ago, there was a media storm around a comment
Pope Francis made…imagine that. He dared
to utter those dangerous words, “Who am I to judge?”
In his comment, the Holy Father was basically quoting
scripture. “There is only one lawgiver
and judge,” writes St. James in his Epistle.
“He is the one able to save and destroy.
So, who are you to judge your neighbor?”
Neither the Pope, nor any Christian, can point to anyone and
say, that person is definitely going to Hell because of their sins. Such a judgment is reserved only to God. Pope Francis isn’t telling us to throw away
the Catechism and ignore the Scriptures because all roads lead to heaven. He’s
just saying, he’s not the one who makes the rules and none of us are either.
Our Gospel this weekend is very clear that there are eternal
consequences for rejecting God’s law.
There will be, a separation at the end of time, weed from wheat, sheep
from goats, the saved from the damned, those who accepted God’s grace and those
who rejected it, the righteous from the evil doers.
Though Pope Francis does not claim to be the judge of souls,
he still teaches us how to form right judgment.
We need rightly formed minds and hearts so that we can discern the good
from the evil, the path that leads to heaven from the path that leads to hell. Sometimes it’s not so easy to tell the
difference. Sometimes our minds and
hearts want to go one way, and our bodies want to go the other.
Right judgment is called by St. Paul one of the fruits of
the spirit. But good fruit only comes
from healthy plants. That the fruit of
fruit judgment may grow we need to remaining rooted in Christ’s truth; and
cultivate our faith by reading the scripture, studying the catechism, daily
prayer, fasting, and avoiding the poisonous and corrupting elements of our
culture.
In his letter to the Romans St. Paul writes, “Do not conform
yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you
may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.” If we are conformed to this behaviors and
attitudes of our culture, we will not be able to discern God’s will. We don’t learn right from wrong by imitating
the morally defunct souls on MTV.
No doubt, we must be very careful about what we hear and see
on television and the internet. As our
Lord teaches in the Gospel, there is an enemy sowing weeds out there. There is a powerful force which reviles the
Church, mocks her moral teachings, invents lies about her history, and distorts
her doctrines. The world labels the
Church as intolerant because she resists caving to the world’s corruption.
Christians believe that we do have a moral and spiritual
responsibility to conform our lives to God’s law, which is unchanging and not
determined by a majority vote.
It is not up to us to judge people as weeds or wheat, but we
must certainly avoid those behaviors and attitudes which transgress the moral
law and lead to the corruption of our souls.
Fed by the Eucharist this day, may God’s good fruit continue
to flourish in our souls, that we may live lives that are good, and pleasing,
and perfect, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
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