Saint Camillus and his Miracle of the Cross

Jesus speaks to Saint Camillus from the Cross

He was at the end of his rope, at the point of almost despairing and giving up, when Jesus came to life on the Cross in his bedroom and spoke to him,

"Why are you afraid?  Do you not realize that this is not your work, but Mine?"

With that Saint Camillus decided he would form a Congregation, but then who would follow a layman? 

Therefore, under the spiritual direction of his confessor, St. Philip Neri, Camillus began his walk toward the priesthood. 

To bring this about he first entered the School of the Jesuits, beginning at the very bottom. 

Considering he was now thirty years old, how very humiliating it had to be studying with the younger men. 

But persist he did and on the 26th of May, 1584 he was ordained a priest.  To his delight, he celebrated his first Mass in the same hospital he had been serving in all those years, among his beloved sick.

Saint Camillus founded a new Congregation, The Ministers of the Infirm.  He had a Vision of Our Lady. 

She, the Heavenly designer, gave him the design of the habit she wanted him to wear. 

It consisted of a long black cassock with a large red cloth cross in the middle.  In obedience to Our Lady, and as a sign of his love for Christ, Camillus asked permission to wear a red cloth cross on his cassock, and it was granted by the Pope. 

Everything in place, Saint Camillus and his companions adorned their cassocks with the red crosses and they were on their way, working with the sick.  One day, showing his red cross to the people, Camillus proclaimed,

"Look at this cross, which my mother feared was to be the ruin of her house, how God has changed it into the resurrection of many and an exaltation of His glory!"

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