Saint Rose of Lima

That young woman was Rose of Lima (Rosa de Lima), the first flower of holiness in the Americas to be canonized by the Church. She is honored as patroness of the Americas, of Peru and of the Philippines. Her life shows that in a land full of greed and violence, one small soul closely united with Christ crucified can make compassion and purity bloom for a whole continent.

When the little girl was only a few months old, lying in her cradle, a native woman who helped in the house looked at her chubby, rosy, radiant face and exclaimed in amazement:

“The baby’s face is as beautiful as a blooming rose!”

Touched by the words, her mother began calling her Rosa, Rose. When she was confirmed in 1597 by the holy Archbishop Turibius of Mogrovejo, himself later canonized, he made that name official: Rose.

When she was twelve, the family fell into serious financial trouble because of her father’s losses in the silver mines, a risky business but also the main source of income for the Spanish colonists in Peru at the time. The whole family was reduced to poverty. Without complaining, young Rose rolled up her sleeves to help her parents: by day she grew fresh flowers in the garden to sell at the market, and by night she sat by an oil lamp working fine lace until late, earning every coin she could to support her aging parents and her younger brothers and sisters. Her skillful hands put her whole love for God into every stitch.

In that solitary place, Rose lived an extraordinary life of penance. She fasted almost all year round, eating only a little dry bread and water, never meat or fish. Her bed was a wooden plank strewn with sharp shards of pottery and knotty pieces of wood. To unite herself with the Passion of Jesus, she made herself a thin silver crown with thirty-six sharp nails fixed inside, pressing into her scalp. She covered that crown of thorns with a red silk band and a wreath of fresh roses on the outside, so that people would see only a pretty wreath of flowers, with no idea that her head was bleeding painfully every day.

Yet that life of penance did not make her gloomy or eccentric. Rose’s face always shone with a peaceful smile and Easter joy. She loved nature and talked to the birds and insects in the garden as if they were friends. Every evening at sunset, people saw a flock of little birds swoop down to the hut and sing along with the young woman’s psalms of praise to God. She also turned a small room in her parents’ house into a charitable infirmary. There, with her own hands, she bathed, bandaged and spoon-fed elderly, sick Indian women and African slaves abandoned by their masters. She saw them as the suffering image of Christ Himself.

Many theologians and clergy of the time, suspecting that she was under diabolical illusions, summoned her before strict commissions of inquiry. But her deep humility and her wise answers, inspired by the Holy Spirit, led the most learned theologians of the University of San Marcos (one of the oldest universities in the Americas, founded in 1551) to acknowledge with admiration that this young religious was being guided directly by God Himself.

In 1669 she was proclaimed principal patroness of all Latin America and of the Philippine islands. The Church celebrates her on August 23 each year; her feast was formerly kept on August 30. In Vietnam, Saint Rose of Lima is a well-loved saint, chosen as patroness by many parishes and children’s associations and by tens of thousands of Catholic women.