St. Camillus de Lellis – July 18

July 18, 2021 by Amy Welborn

Celebrated in most of the rest of the world on July 14, but here in the US on July 18 – today!

A fascinating figure – mercenary, gambler…and then…

When you live in a landscape framed and defined by Scripture, the great Tradition and the lives of the saints, stories like those of St. Camillus de Lellis become no longer shocking. You see how God’s grace and power reaches into every corner of human life, into the corners of life of every kind of human person, and you can so very easily understand that you, too, have a place, that this Word is very near to you.

Living in the flesh – as Paul calls it – meaning, the worldly world, the material world of just things and people without reference to the One who loved us into existence and in Whose Image we are – you don’t get this. You look out and you see winners and losers, successes and failures, the talented and the schlubs, and you know who matters in that world and who doesn’t, who might as well just give up.

And maybe, you can’t help but suspect, you’re in that latter group.

And you shrug and watch that purposeful, meaningful world climb past, regretful and maybe even envious, and perhaps even hopeless and a little bit lonely. There they go, doing important things.

But that’s not real. That’s not The Real. Living in the Real World – God’s world – you know this. It’s so near to you, it’s in your mouth and in your heart. Sure, you may struggle with some of it, wondering and wandering, but if your primary reference point is this crazy Word of God filled with the small and weak plucked out for greatness and the sinners starting over and the dead blinking in the light – and then day after day meeting his small, weak, sinful once-dead saints living those same stories again and again…

…life looks different, and you can live it in a different way.