Saint of the Week – St Rose of Lima




Name: Isabel ‘Rose’ Flores de Oliva
Born: 20^th April 1586; Lima (Peru)
Died: 24^th August 1617; Lima (Peru)
Feast Day: 23^th August
Patron Saint of: Florists/gardeners/embroiderers/Peru.

Even though Christianity has only been in the “New World” for the past 500 years it’s been a place of immense growth for the Church, producing a spiritual bounty of vocations, religious foundations, and saints. Latin America is currently home to about 425 million Catholics, which accounts for about 40% of the world’s Catholics. The very first canonised saint who was born in the Americas is St Rose of Lima, who was canonised by Pope Clement X in 1671.

Rose was one of eleven children of Caspar de Flores and Maria del Oliva. She was Christened Isabel but from childhood was given the nickname Rose, following a strange vision reported by a servant who claimed to see the infant’s face transform into a beautiful rose. As she blossomed to maturity Rose was frequently admired for her outstanding beauty for which she became increasing perturbed, fearful her beauty might be an occasion of sin or temptation. She is said to have resorted to rubbing her face with pepper so as to make her skin appear rough and unattractive. To help her parents make ends meet, Rose worked long hours in the garden growing flowers to sell in the markets, and then toiled late into the night with needlework.

From a young age Rose wanted to give herself to Christ, however her parents were more pragmatic and sought to arrange a husband for her. Rose adamantly refused marriage and having taken a private vow of virginity, taking as her inspiration St Catherine of Siena. Like St Catherine, Rose joined the third order of St Dominic. Although not a professed religious as such, her status as a Dominican Tertiary enabled her to live a life of solitude and prayer, shielding her from the ambitions of her parents and the attention of admirers. Rose spent increasingly long hours in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament and also undertook increasingly rigorous penances. She fasted three days per week, abstained completely from meat and permitted herself only two hours of sleep per night, so as to maximise her lengthy prayer vigils. Rose also took to wearing a silver coronet that was barbed inside so as to remind her of Christ’s crown of thorns. Due to these practises, she endured scorn and mockery of even family and friends, yet she quickly became the friend of the poor on account of the charity that she lavished on the needy. She also had a profound devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and would receive Holy Communion daily, something that was almost unheard of at the time.

Rose lived this mystical life of prayer and penance until her premature death at the age of 31, upon which she was immediately revered as a saint. St Rose is invoked as the patron saint of a wide range of causes. Perhaps the most compelling is that of the patron saint of those ridiculed for their piety. If Rose’s life seemed strange to her contemporaries, it appears only more jarringly peculiar to our own times. There would be many today who might be tempted to condemn Rose’s penitential practices as eccentric, unhealthy or downright dangerous. Yet these practices did not proceed from a masochistic self-loathing, but rather from a profound, mystical love for Christ crucified, and a desire to be united to His sufferings for the love of souls. She accepted the humiliation of being mocked by her peers for her piety as a further means of uniting herself to Christ who was similarly misunderstood and despised. As Christians living in the 3^rd millennium, we can all too easily become preoccupied with winning the approval of the world – of not wanting to appear strange especially for being Catholic. We can be tempted to hide all evidence of our faith (tucking our crucifixes, scapulars and rosary beads out of sight) and to want to convince family, friends, colleagues and the world at large that we’re ‘normal’! One frequently sees in the lives of the saints, like St Rose, a complete disregard for the need of human respect. Her exclusive concern was to please her Lord, Jesus Christ. Perhaps if we can’t quite hope to imitate St Rose in the severity of her penances, we might hope to imitate her in overcoming the need for worldly approval: to be a ‘fool for Christ’ and to make every concern secondary to that of pleasing Jesus Christ.

St Rose of Lima, pray for us!