By RAY CAVANAUGH
The first saint born in the Americas, Rose of Lima practiced both charity and asceticism with extreme intensity until her death at age 31. She is now the patroness of South America, and churches across the world bear her name. This August 24 marks the 400th anniversary of her death.
The future St. Rose was born “Isabel Flores de Oliva” on April 20, 1586, in Lima, Peru. She was one of eleven children in a respected but rather poor family. Her father, Gaspar Flores, was a native of Spain and had served in the Spanish Army. Her mother, Maria de Oliva y Herrera, was a Peruvian native of indigenous heritage.
While still a child, the future saint made a startlingly precocious and “irrevocable vow” to God, promising “to have no other spouse but Him alone,” according to an 1854 article in The Catholic Layman.
Her parents wanted her to marry, but she was so opposed to a worldly marriage that she undertook ways to lessen her remarkable natural beauty. Aside from fasting to make her face pale, she cropped her hair and rubbed her eyes with hot peppers, which, aside from hurting, also made them red like fire.
In spite of the methods she followed to avoid a conventional life, she remained so attractive that she continually elicited the admiration of others, including a son of one of the city’s most distinguished families. To the consternation of everyone else involved, she rejected his proposal.
As The Catholic Layman reported, “Threats and caresses were alike vain. Blows and injuries were heaped upon her by her parents, but with no other effect than to make her more constant in her resolutions.”
She wished to become a nun, but her parents resisted, so she instead became a lay member of Lima’s Third Order of St. Dominic and inhabited a room on her family’s property. Upon entering the order on August 10, 1606, at age 20, she always insisted on performing the dirtiest chores.
Her penances and austerities — which included sleeping on a bed filled with stones — began to concern others in her order. But she would not relent.
Though self-castigation formed a huge part of her regimen, she also sought to assist others, including one young destitute woman with a malodorous wound, for whom she worked extra in order to provide payment for her lodging.
She assisted many other “poor women and girls whom she met in the streets, whatever might be their condition,” relates The Life of Saint Rose of Lima (translation by J.B. Feuillet). This book adds how, beyond providing these disadvantaged and ailing people with lodging, “she nursed them, made their beds, dressed their ulcers, washed their clothes . . . making no distinction between the Spaniard and the Indian, the free and the slave, the European or the African negroes.”
Basically, there was no disease loathsome enough to deter her “indefatigable charity.”
During those times when no one was under her personal care, she brought her charitable ways to a local hospital. Additionally, she sold flowers from her garden and produced items of embroidery to raise money for her family and for her charitable endeavors.
As well as she attended to others, she neglected her own health, which well might have been compromised by her rigorous penitential regimen. Reportedly, she prophesied her date of death on August 24, 1617, when her 31-year-old body succumbed to a paralyzing fever.
At death, she was even two years younger than St. Catherine of Siena, another tertiary of the Dominican Order who practiced extreme austerity and in whom St. Rose found a role model. Her funeral in Lima drew significant attendance, and reports of miracles occurred soon after.
Beatified in 1667 by Pope Clement IX, St. Rose of Lima was canonized four years later by Pope Clement X, thereby becoming the first saint to hail from the Americas. The decade following her canonization saw the publication of her biography The Life of Saint Rose of Lima, a work that since has appeared in multiple translations and editions.
Long venerated as the patron saint of Peru and of South America, she is also the patroness of “embroiderers, gardeners, florists, those who suffer ridicule for their piety, and people who suffer family problems,” according to catholic.org.
The churches that bear her name exist in such far-ranging locations as Peru, Argentina, the U.S. (which has dozens) and Canada, as well as Australia, the Philippines, and the Caribbean nation of Trinidad & Tobago.
Though her feast day has since been changed to August 23, she is celebrated on August 30, which is a public holiday in her native Peru. A shrine dedicated to her — along with two other saints — is found in Lima’s Convent of St. Dominic (or “Santo Domingo”). Her skull, adorned with a crown of roses, is displayed at the Basilica in Lima.
Her likeness is displayed on her country’s highest-denomination banknote. Such distinction is certainly an honor, but given her modesty and rejection of worldly things, it’s very possible she might disapprove.
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress