St Rose of Lima (1586-1617) third order Dominican
St
Rose of Lima, Peru, lived an extraordinary life of holiness and
self-denial.
A beautiful child
Saint Rose of Lima, Peru, was
born Isabel De Flores Y Del Oliva in that city on 20 April, 1586. Her
father was a Spaniard, and her mother of native Peruvian blood. Isabel
was a sickly baby but soon grew healthy and beautiful. Her family was
poor, and hoped that Isabel, growing into an extremely attractive young
woman, would marry well and assist the family. But from childhood, when
Isabel was nicknamed Rose for her looks and rosy cheeks, she was more
taken up with the religious world than the secular.
Like St Catherine of Siena
First she did not wish
to marry, and this was a great source of tension in the family. She
took a vow of chastity and modeled herself on St Catherine of Siena,
devoting herself to a life of self-denial. Despite the ridicule of
friends and family, Rose continued to practice these extreme forms of
religious observance. She fasted, then became a vegetarian, mortifying
her flesh with hard work and going so far as to rub lye or lime into her
hands, pepper on her face and skewer her head with a long pin instead
of the roses her mother put there. She wanted to turn attention away
from her own beauty and focus it on God.
Third Order of St Dominic
Besides, she flogged
herself, wore a hair shirt and slept little. It took her many years of
prayer, fasting, hard work and secret penances before her family
reluctantly agreed to let her become a member of the Third Order of St
Dominic, taking vows of poverty, at twenty. She moved out of her family
home into a small grotto built on their property, where she continued to
devote herself to the care of the poor and infirm. She helped her
family with her fine workmanship and was known for her lace-making.
A figure of contradiction
Rose gladly offered up
her suffering, atoning for the idolatry of her country, for the
conversion of sinners, and for the souls in purgatory. Some people were
enthusiastic in their praise of her, while others scorned her life.
A huge funeral
Following her death at thirty-one,
her funeral could not take place for days because the people of Lima
thronged to see her body. She was buried in the cemetery of the
Dominican convent. Later, as a number of miracles were attributed to
her, her remains were moved to the church of San Domingo, where was laid
to rest in a special chapel.
Big feast-day in Peru
Rose of Lima was beatified
by Pope Clement IX in 1667 and canonised in 1671 by Clement X, the first
canonised saint of the Western hemisphere. Great celebrations attend
her feast day in the city of Lima.