Saint Rose of Saint Mary

As her parents had fallen into need, she employed all her industry to try to assist them. She spent part of the night working with her needle, at which she was very skilled, and during the day she cultivated a small garden, in order to feed them with the earnings she could make. When they were ill, she assisted them with incredible assiduity: she was constantly at their bedside, spending days and nights there, and would not leave them unless she was pulled away by the necessity of rendering them some other service; she made their bed, prepared all their remedies, and rendered them all sorts of assistance, even in the most menial and disgusting tasks.

Rose of Saint Mary h Rose de Sainte-Marie First saint of the New World, Dominican virgin. ad everything necessary to please the world: uncommon beauty, exquisite judgment, a very gentle temperament, an excellent heart, and habits that were thoughtful and full of politeness. These qualities were the reason her mother thought early on of marrying her off, and led her to believe, with good reason, that they would secure her an advantageous alliance; however, such was not her vocation. Her attraction had long called her to the Third Order of Saint Dominic, and she would have followed it very early on, had her mother not opposed it. In the meantime, she had neglected nothing to end her servitude; it was with this design that she had cut her hair, that she discolored and thinned her face through fasting, that she fled the gaze of men, and hid her beauty under coarse clothing. During the four years that her parents lived in Canta, she never went out, not even to walk in a delightful garden that touched the walls of the paternal home. All her precautions did not, however, hide her from public attention, as she had intended; several young men, charmed by her virtue and her external qualities, thought of asking her parents for her hand in marriage. One of them, having manifested his desire to her mother, she was all the more delighted to see this inclination in him, as it conformed to her own thoughts. Entering, therefore, with ardor into the views of her son, she hastened to go and discuss this matter with the mother of the young person. This proposal was welcomed as a blessing from God, and the matter was concluded, subject to ratification by Rose; but that was precisely the point of difficulty. The holy girl, bound for a long time by a perpetual vow of virginity, did not have the courage to reveal her secret to her mother; but she shared with her her repugnance for the state that was being proposed to her, and begged her to respond negatively. This refusal raised a terrible storm against her; her entire family undertook to tear from her, through violence, a consent that she did not wish to give voluntarily. Consequently, they spoke to her only in a tone of anger; they overwhelmed her with reproaches and insults; they even went so far as to use the most ignominious treatment. However, supported by Saint Catherine of Siena, whom she had taken as her pro tectress from childhood an sainte Catherine de Sienne Italian Dominican saint, model and patroness of Rose. d in whose arms she had taken refuge during this storm, the holy girl persisted in her resolution to have no other Spouse than the One she had chosen for herself.

With the approval of her family, F ather Alphonse Velasquè Père Alphonse Velasquès Confessor of Saint Rose. s, her confessor, solemnly gave her, in the chapel of the Holy Rosary, the habit of the Third Order of Saint Dominic that she had so long and so ardently desired. With her mother's consent, she had a small hermitage built in her house, where she thought only of living in such a way that no part of her time would pass without fruit. All the hours of the day were divided between manual labor and the holy exercise of prayer, and the best part of the nights was devoted to contemplation. She then set herself with more fervor than ever to the practice of the most rigorous virtues of Christianity. Her humility was surprising: she occupied herself only with the lowliest tasks of the house, leaving other duties to the servant; she suffered with extreme patience the outrages her parents inflicted upon her for the retired life she led; she attributed to her own sins all the misfortunes that occurred in her family; she rejected all the praise given to her, and even imposed harsh penances upon herself when she had been applauded, to stop the complacency she might feel from it; she hid her illnesses as much as she could, for fear of being relieved of them. When she confessed, it was with an abundance of tears, groans, and sighs that would have easily made her pass for a debauched woman burdened with all sorts of crimes, had everyone not been persuaded of her innocence.

She lived with such great restraint that she was never heard to utter a word louder than another, nor one that testified that she found fault with the conduct and actions of anyone whatsoever. Her sweet and affable temperament made her lovable: everyone said that it was inappropriate that she had been given the name Rose, because she did not have its thorns. Her charity toward her neighbor was universal: it seemed that this queen of virtues was the soul that made her act and that animated her words, her actions, and her whole life.

With this, she was so detached from creatures, and so insensitive to all the satisfactions of the earth, that she arrived in a short time at a purity of heart that yielded in nothing to that of the angels; for, during the thirty-one years that she lived on earth, she never committed a venial sin in matters of impurity, and, even, which borders on the miraculous, she was never tormented by dangerous thoughts on this subject, from which the Saints most cherished and most favored by God have not been exempt. Eleven learned religious, six from the Order of Saint Dominic, and five Jesuits, who heard her general confessions several times, have testified to this legally and under oath.

The love of the Cross was so ardent in the soul of this blessed woman that she sought out all its bitterness, following the example of Saint Catherine of Siena, of whom she wished to be the copy as well as the spiritual daughter. From her childhood, she abstained from eating all kinds of fruit, which are excellent in Peru. At the age of six, she began to fast three days a week on bread and water. At fifteen, she made a vow never to eat meat unless compelled by those who had authority over her; her mother, unable to bear this way of life, forced her to sit at the table with the others; Rose obeyed, but she knew how to forestall any satisfaction by always mixing something bitter with what she ate, such as wormwood and other wild herbs; and she even kept a vase full of sheep's gall, with which she seasoned her food, and with which she washed her mouth every morning, in memory of Him whom the Savior was given to drink on the tree of the Cross: so that one is hard-pressed to know if she did not suffer more in eating than in abstaining from eating. Her fast was all the more difficult and rigorous in that she took only one meal of a piece of bread and a little water in twenty-four hours. During all of Lent, she cut out the use of bread, contenting herself with a few orange seeds, which she reduced to five every Friday of that forty-day period. She was seen to content herself with bread and a little water for fifty days: another time she remained seven whole weeks without drinking, despite the unbearable heat of the country; and, at the end of her life, she quite often spent several days without drinking or eating.

Although her body was very weakened and withered by so many fasts, this did not prevent her from exercising other almost incredible austerities upon herself. Ordinary disciplines were too mild for her; she made one for herself out of two iron chains, with which she struck herself every day until she bled, and particularly when she did so for the conversion of sinners. Her confessor, being warned of the pitiless manner in which she treated herself, forbade her to use such a harsh discipline anymore: she obeyed, but it was only to change her torment, for she made a three-row belt out of this iron chain and tightened it so hard around her waist that it entered deep into her flesh; she could not, afterwards, remove it except with extreme pain and a very great effusion of blood.

The hair shirt she wore was woven of horsehair and reached from her shoulders to her wrists and knees; but, to make it harsher, she also armed it with an infinity of needle points underneath; she would watch for the opportunity when baking was being done at her parents' home, and, when she could not be seen by anyone, she would present the soles of her feet—the only part of her body without wounds—to the mouth of the oven, where the heat is most violent, remaining constantly in this voluntary torment until the pain caused her to faint.

As she was holily insatiable for torments, she used yet another stratagem to make herself suffer. From her earliest childhood, she made herself a crown of tin, and, having attached a quantity of small pointed nails to it, she put it on her head and wore it for several years without anyone noticing. A few years later, she made herself another from a silver band, into which she fixed three rows of sharp iron spikes, each consisting of thirty-three spikes, in honor of the thirty-three years that the Son of God lived on earth, which made ninety-nine in all. She wore it in this state for many years, with incredible pain, because these spikes made as many holes in her. Thus, she afflicted every part of her body, and she made herself so similar to Jesus Christ crucified that one could say of her what Scripture said of that Man of Sorrows: *A planta pedis usque ad verticem non est in eo sanitas*: "From the sole of the foot to the top of the head, there is no member or part in his body that does not have its particular pain and torment."

Her bed was always the hardest and most painful that she could manage; but the one on which she slept the longest was made in the shape of a chest, filled with pieces of rough wood and broken tiles, the points of which tore her whole body; her pillow was nothing but a large stone, also quite rough. This unbearable rigor clearly shows that this bed was more capable of making her suffer and preventing her from sleeping than of providing her with rest. However, this invincible lover of the Cross had further reduced herself to sleeping only two hours, and very often she did not sleep them in their entirety. She managed the rest of the time so well that she spent twelve hours, both day and night, in a perpetual application of her mind to God through prayer, and, for the other ten, she employed them in needlework, or other tasks, to provide for the needs of her family. If sleep came to surprise her in these moments, she exercised new rigors upon herself to triumph over its attacks.

The love that the blessed Rose had for her God, and her distaste for the creature, were so powerful that, to avoid all the complacencies and conversations of the world, she often disfigured her face and made herself unable to receive or pay visits. Her mother, who saw well that this bloody conduct was premeditated, resolved to take her with her no more; she even permitted her, as we have said, to make a small hermitage in the garden of their house, in order to live there separated from any conversation other than with her God. It was in this dear solitude that, uniting herself more and more to Jesus Christ through continual prayer, as much in the time of work as in that of prayer, she merited that Our Lord should unite himself to her in his turn, no longer in an invisible and hidden manner, but by entirely sensible ways and caresses full of brilliance and glory. For, one day when she was absorbed in God, in the Chapel of the Rosary, in the church of the Dominican Fathers, that adorable Savior, who wished to have her for his Lover and for his Spouse, appeared to her, and, after having poured into her soul a torrent of joys and delights, he said to her: "Rose of my heart, I take you for my Spouse." The Saint, delighted by this kindness, but otherwise feeling herself unworthy of such an illustrious alliance, replied with profound respect: "Here, my God, is your servant, it is the only quality that I deserve. I carry in the depths of my soul characters too visible of servitude and slavery to deserve the name and rank of your Spouse." Then the Blessed Virgin, to prevent in her any fear of illusion, assured her of the truth of this mystery with these obliging words: "Rose, the beloved of my Son, you are now his true Spouse."

Since that blessed day, this faithful lover felt her heart inflamed with new flames; and, as she renewed the fervor of her prayers, to make ever more perfect the union she had with her divine Spouse, he finally became so intimately present in all the powers of her soul that she could not turn her thoughts away from him, even if she had expressly wished to apply them to some other object.

The demon, always envious of the happiness of the friends of God, did not fail to interrupt such charming enjoyment with frightful temptations; he tormented this great Saint for the space of fifteen years, an hour and a half a day, with such violence that she suffered, in some way, the same pains that souls endure in purgatory. During this furious storm, she could no longer think of God, and felt unbearable desolations, abandonments, and dryness; the spirits of darkness filled her imagination with such horrible specters that when she felt the hour of her pains approaching, she trembled in her whole body and was obliged to pray to her dear Spouse to dispense her from drinking this chalice. Sometimes even the temptation was so violent that it would have made her fall into despair, and would have a thousand times dealt her the blow of death, had God not sustained her by His extraordinary grace. This conduct appeared so strange to everyone that she was examined by the most famous theologians of the University of Lima; but, after a ll the interrogati Université de Lima Capital of Peru and the saint's primary place of residence. ons they deemed appropriate to put to her, they testified that there was no illusion in her state, and that her pains were a trial from God, who wished to keep her in humility and dispose her to eminent perfection, through a path full of darkness and suffering. It is true, nevertheless, that when she had emerged from this torment, she received interior consolations that made her forget all its rigors. The Son of God often made Himself visible to her eyes, honored her with His familiarity, and admitted her to privacies that were like delicious foretastes of the happiness He was preparing for her in heaven. Sometimes He relieved her perceptibly in an illness, sometimes He consoled and strengthened her in an affliction, sometimes He testified to the excess of His love through conversations full of benevolence and tenderness, and sometimes He bestowed upon her entirely holy caresses, such as the Holy Spirit describes to us in the Canticle of Canticles. The Blessed Virgin, who was her powerful protectress, also favored her very often with her visits, in order to give her the help that was necessary for her to advance in virtue. Her guardian angel also did her the same favor, and lowered himself to visibly render her a thousand little services. Finally, the blessed Rose had such frequent conversations with Saint Catherine of Siena, who had been given to her by God as her mistress, that the features of the face of this seraphic virgin soon passed onto her own, as happened to Moses, who was transformed in God following the conversation he had had with Him on the mountain; she resembled her so perfectly that all the people of Peru, who had her image before their eyes, took Rose for a second Saint Catherine of Siena.

We are no longer surprised if, after so many sweetnesses and celestial communications, she became more than ever insensible to all the pleasures and consolations of the earth, and if she always had an invincible patience in persecutions, in illnesses, and in other sorrows. There is hardly any illness by which she was not tormented: quinsy, asthma, stomach and chest pain, and sciatica were those that troubled her the most; but, in the midst of all these evils, she usually said these words: "O good Jesus, may your will be done! I ask only for the increase of my sufferings, provided that at the same time you increase in me the flames of your holy love."

This great love she had for God was followed by a zeal so ardent for His glory that she spared nothing to procure for Him constantly new lovers; she worked at it, sometimes by her discourses filled with the fire of charity, sometimes by her prayers and tears, and at other times by great miracles she obtained from heaven to make such a good design succeed. This same love filled her with compassion for the poor and for all kinds of unfortunate people. There was nothing she would not do to relieve them. She took sick women and girls into her home, to whom she gave all her care; she attended to them eagerly, made their beds, dressed their wounds, prepared their remedies, and rendered them all the other assistance they needed in that state.

One cannot speak worthily enough of her devotion to the most holy sacrament of the altar. She usually received communion three times a week and sometimes more often, as her directors deemed appropriate; but she never did so without preparing herself by some particular austerity, by fasting, by prayer, and mainly by the sacrament of penance, which she never approached without a sincere contrition of heart. She was in this very different from certain people who confess only out of habit, and bring to this venerable sacrament neither sorrow, nor sentiment of piety, nor any true resolution to break their bad habits, especially that angry and shrewish temper which makes them unbearable in their families; since, on the contrary, on the very days of communion, and after having received Our Lord, one sees them more impatient and more carried away than on other days. It was not the same for the blessed Rose: as her dispositions were all holy, she always left the holy Table more gentle, more humble, and more modest than before, and so filled with the flames of divine love that the fire which burned in the depths of her heart reflected on all parts of her body, and made her face all radiant and inflamed.

Here is a trait of her zeal for this august mystery: one day, the Dutch fleet appeared on the coasts of Peru; it was already approaching the port of Lima; all the people were frightened by it and expected to see the city sacked soon: Rose alone remained intrepid, and, despite the weakness of her sex, she entered the church, placed herself on the step of th flotte hollandaise Naval threat against Lima that Rose faced with prayer and courage. e altar, and, animated by a courage that astonished everyone, she set about defending the tabernacle at the peril of her life, against the fury of these heretics. A short time later, they came to tell her that the enemies had weighed anchor, without undertaking anything; she showed much joy at their retreat, but she displayed extreme sorrow that, she said, she had not deserved to suffer martyrdom for her dear Spouse, as she wished in such a beautiful occasion.

She also had a perfect devotion to the Blessed Virgin and to her illustrious mistress, Saint Catherine of Siena; she addressed her vows and prayers to them unceasingly, with fervor and in a quite extraordinary manner.

It was not possible, being so imbued with the spirit of God, that she did not always feel great confidence in His goodness and mercies: which meant that she could never form the slightest doubt: firstly, of her salvation; secondly, of the inviolable friendship of God towards her, and that, reciprocally, she would never separate herself from His love; thirdly, of His all-powerful help in the necessities and dangers where she might need His protection, as she experienced on a thousand different occasions.

God also honored her with the gift of prophecy; she predicted to her mother that she would be a nun, notwithstanding her old age, her poverty, and the little disposition she had for religion; she was indeed one in a convent that the Saint herself advised to be built, founded solely on the confidence she had that God would provide all things necessary for this enterprise. She also predicted the establishment of another famous monastery of nuns of the Order of Saint Dominic, in the city of Lima, and she indicated who would be the foundress, the superior, and many other circumstances that were beyond all appearance. But the most remarkable of her predictions was that of the place, the day, and the very moment of her death, which she declared so distinctly that one would have said she saw them in God in the same way they have since been accomplished.

She prepared herself for this blessed passage, which was to be the day of Saint Bartholomew, by the redoubling of her prayers, her fasts, her vigils, and all her austerities. Finally, having reached her thirty-eighth year, she fell ill at the beginning of the month of August, with a multitude of very contrary ailments. The doctors who came to see her, after having carefully examined her condition, confessed that her ailments were above human science, that there was a miracle in the union of so many incompatible accidents, and that it was God who made them subsist in such a weak body, in order to share with this predestined spouse the terrible torments of His passion; also, as she had herself foreseen all the pains she endured, she always suffered them with admirable patience and resignation, even at the time when they redoubled, and when their attacks were more violent, which happened very often.

Three days before her death, she received the Holy Viaticum and Extreme Unction, with entirely heavenly dispositions. To perfectly imitate the humility of Jesus Christ, she asked for forgiveness from all the servants, her eyes bathed in tears, although she had never offended or displeased them. She expressed a thousand regrets to her mother for having been such a burden to her during her life. She thanked Dom Gonzalès, her protector, with whom she had retired in her last years, very affectionately. She prayed for her enemies; and, holding a small crucifix in her hand, she kissed it unceasingly.

She had raptures, during which she tasted, by anticipation, the delights of heaven. And, two hours before she expired, returning from a long ecstasy, she turned to her confessor and said to him in confidence: "O my father, what great things I would have to tell you of the abundance of consolations with which God will fill the Saints during eternity! I am going with an incredible satisfaction of spirit, to contemplate the face of my God, whom I have wished to possess all the time of my life." On August 24, the day of Saint Bartholomew, she rendered her holy soul into the hands of her Spouse, as she had predicted, after having pronounced these words twice: "Jesus Christ, be with me!" She was then thirty-one years and a few months old.

Several people had a revelation of her death at the very moment she expired; several also knew, by the same means, the glory she possessed in heaven; her face appeared so beautiful after her passing that one was a long time without believing that she was dead. She was buried in the convent of the Dominican Fathers, with all the pomp and magnificence that this illustrious Servant of God deserved. The Archbishop of Lima officiated; the members of the chapter carried her body part of the way, the magistrates and the principals of the city carried it afterwards; and the superiors of the religious houses received it from the hands of the latter to carry it into the church. The miracles that were performed, by means of this holy body, in the sight of all the people, attracted such a great concourse of people that it was two days before they could bury it. The ardor of the people to cut her clothes was also so stubborn that they gave her new ones up to six times.

As miracles continued daily in increasing numbers at the tomb of the blessed Rose, Pope Urban VIII initiated, in the year 1630, apostolic commissioners on site to investigate them legally. One hundred and eighty witnesses appeared before them and testified, in the customary forms, to what they had seen.

One finds in these depositions an infinity of surprising conversions of men and women of all conditions, which had been brought about by the merits of this Spouse of Jesus Christ throughout the kingdom of Peru. It is recorded there that, through her intercession, Madeleine Tortez and Antoine Bran, dead and buried, had been resurrected; that Élisabeth Durand, who had a withered and arid arm, had been miraculously healed by the mere touch of her relics; that a similar grace had been granted to a black woman, by merely touching her habit; and that even the simple dust from her tomb had healed, as it still heals every day, an infinity of people afflicted with all sorts of illnesses, fevers, catarrhs, dropsies, quinsies, and stomach ailments, and that she is very favorable to women whose pregnancy is nearing its term. She was beatified in 1668 by Pope Clement IX. The following year, the same Pontiff gave her the title of principal patroness of Peru and had her name written in the martyrology. Pope Clement X placed this illustrious virgin in the Catalogue of Saints in 1671, and the Churc h solemnizes h pape Clément X Pope who extended the cult of Saint Gonsalo to the entire Dominican Order. er feast on August 30.

Saint Rose is the patroness of Lima; she is represented holding a grappling hook that passes through its shaft and supports by its flukes a city surrounded by the sea. Spes civitatis, one sometimes reads below.

Several authors have written her life; the most ample and exact is that of the Rev. Fr. Feuillet, a religious of the Order of Saint Dominic of the Congregation of Saint Louis. We have followed it in this abridgment. — Cf. Life of Saint Rose of Lima, by Fr. Léonard Hansen, and the Dominican Year.