St.Rose of Lima

Saint Rose was born in Lima, Peru, on April 20, 1586, as her parents’ tenth child. Rose had 12 siblings. Her father, Gaspar Florez, and her mother, Mária Olivia, were high-ranking nobles with considerable wealth. They emigrated to Latin America long before she was born. The very circumstances of Rosenka’s birth were miraculous. Her mother was often in danger of death due to unrest on the border, but she was never in danger during her pregnancy with Rose. Rose herself was born “encased” in a double placenta, much like a beautiful pink rose that slowly develops from bright green leaves. She was baptized with the name Isabela, but this name should not have belonged to her. Her mother understood three months after her birth that the name she had chosen for her daughter was not pleasing to God. In a strange vision, as she bent down to face her sleeping daughter, she saw a beautiful rose floating above her cradle. Admonished in this way, she named her daughter after this flower. Even though the archbishop of Lima gave her the same name as her Burmese, Rose still felt a particular sadness whenever she was addressed in this way. It was not the name she had received at baptism, and she feared it might serve her vanity. She worried about her name until the Mother of God gave her the will of God. One day, she went to the Church of the preaching brothers, threw herself at the feet of the Holy Mother in the rosary chapel, and poured out the confusion she felt. Mother God accepted her request, comforted Ruženka, and asked her to take the name Ruža. The Virgin Mary told her that this name of the rose pleased her Son Jesus Christ and that as proof of love, she would be called the Rose of Saint Mary from now on. Her childhood was extraordinarily patient and obedient, which strongly resembled that of Saint Catherine of Siena. It is recorded that when she was still a child, she had already given evidence of this heroic patience in suffering, which soon became the rule of her life.

Someone inadvertently slammed the box shut and caught little Rose’s thumb. Instead of starting to scream loudly and piteously like the other children, she made every effort to conceal the suffering she had received. When her injury worsened and she lost part of her nail, a surgeon was forced to amputate her thumb. She went through the suffering and pain of this operation with such extraordinary sweetness that the doctor remarked that she never once cried out nor even changed the expression on her face, which would be considered natural, even in a person who has been suffering for years. Rose began with the ascetic by living at an incredibly young age. She was only five when she decided to fast every other day. At age six, she hid needles in the holiday crown she wore in her hair to suppress vanity. She was sincerely afraid of sin, so strong renunciation and physical sacrifices were a matter of course for her. Her little brother was an instrument from God to teach her to judge the vain things of this transitory world. One day, he was playing with her, accidentally throwing a lot of mud on her beautiful, wavy hair. Rose was groomed and dressed neatly and exceptionally nicely, so she was naturally proud of her appearance and angry with her brother. However, her brother said with an unexpectedly deep voice that seemed to come from God himself: “My dear sister, do not be angry with me for this accident. The curled hair of girls are like beautiful cords that surround people’s hearts and draw them unhappily into the eternal flame.” Rose listened to these words as if they were spoken by a holy preacher of God or as words from heaven. She immersed herself, gave up this world forever, and devoted herself to God. From this moment, she received the gift of prayer. Day and night, she devoted herself to this holy conversation with God and did not interrupt her prayers, even while asleep. During the rest, when she slept, her imagination painted so many vivid pictures of her Lord and Savior to entertain her mind that she might say she never ceased to pray. In this way, she received a call from God to follow the path of St. Catherine of Siena. Immersed in the Holy Spirit, she consecrated herself with an irrevocable vow to her pure God Almighty at the age of five. She solemnly vowed never to have any other partner but the Lord Himself.

Rose grew into a lovely girl. Therefore, her parents wanted to marry her to a rich young man. But she was firmly determined to give priority to the spiritual life. To thwart her planned marriage, which her mother stubbornly adhered to, Ruženka cut off her beautiful, long hair but also allegedly rubbed her face with pepper and soaked her hands in lime. She was afraid that her beauty might continue to tempt others. She was habitually rubbing her eyes with pimento, a type of hot Indian pepper, after which her eyes were red as fire and so painful that she could not bear the light. She replied to her mother, who was angry with her: “It would be better for me, my dear mother, to be blind all my life than to be forced to look at the vanities of the world!” When she was asked to marry by the only son of a certain most eminent lady of the city, she went to Canto, a small village near one of the most famous mines in Peru, and remained there for four years without leaving the house. The proposal was very agreeable to her mother, who wished to provide for her family in this way. Still, Ruženka gave her virginity to God and, with perfect rejection of the idea of ​​marriage, openly declared that she would never consent. She decided to join the order to defeat the plans of the enemies of her purity. Two miracles confirmed this calling. She doubted her vocation and intended to enter the Incarnation monastery, where religious sisters were already expecting her. But before she set out on her journey, she went to say goodbye to our blessed Virgin in the rosary chapel belonging to the monastery of St. Dominica. She remained on her knees in prayer for a long time at the foot of the altar, and when she had finished her prayer, she tried to get up but could not. She called her brother to help her, but suddenly she felt a hand that grabbed her sharply, and no one could take her away from the place. She immediately understood that it was a sign from heaven not to leave Saint Dominic. She decided to enter the third order of St. Dominika and could stand up and leave the chapel without any problems. The second of the signs that confirmed her calling was nature itself. On the vast plains of Lima, countless butterflies fly. One in particular is beautifully colored in black and white, exactly the colors of the Order of St. Dominica. One of these butterflies flew in and kept circling the Sleeping Beauty. Again, she followed the steps of St. Catherine of Siena and entered the third order of St. Dominica. Her wish finally came true on August 10, 1606, and she became a Dominican Tertiary. She was 20 years old then. She set up a wooden hut in the garden of her birthplace, where she lived and prayed ever since. She almost stopped eating and rarely slept. She endured the most severe mental and physical pains with unspeakable patience. She repeatedly received manifestations of mystical graces. She often prayed: “Lord, multiply my suffering and my love!” In the small room, which she built with the help of her brother from bare boards and sycamore leaves, she had only a modest, ascetic bed, which consisted of seven logs connected by straps, and she poured shards and pebbles between them. She read spiritual books and long prayers in this refuge, bringing her various mystical experiences. In moments of her deepest devotion to God, she wore a hair shirt and a forged crown of thorns and scourged herself with leather thongs. She hardly took food and slept only two to three hours a day; the rest of the time, she devoted herself to work or prayer. Her deep spirituality and extreme penance aroused astonishment and outrage among the inhabitants of Lima. Some considered her crazy, while others, on the contrary, began to visit her. She never stopped believing in what Jesus Christ entrusted her in her visions: achieving God’s grace and salvation is impossible without suffering and renunciation. The most frequent object of her meditation was the cross of Christ, towards which her gaze was often directed. She went to take care of the sick, the impoverished, and the marginalized. Physically tortured herself, she survived fifteen long years of spiritual dryness and despondency. She experienced immense physical and mental suffering amid mystical experiences. She sacrificed all her suffering for the conversion of sinners. She received such sweet and noble consolation, especially from the words of the Lord himself: “Rose of my heart, be my Bride!” and a wonderfully intimate relationship with the Guardian Angel, Saint Catherine of Siena, and the Mother of God. She often went for seven weeks without drinking water or any other liquid. And towards the end of her life, she lived for several consecutive days without eating or drinking at all. Her supernatural abstinence from food was well known to all the inhabitants of Lima: it was generally believed that she passed weeks without eating or drinking and that when circumstances compelled her to appease the burning heat consumed her, she drank warm water to mitigate the pleasure of cold water. She was not even satisfied with the physical fasting itself. Streams of blood flowed daily from her body caused by iron chains and other instruments of penance. After becoming a religious, she was not satisfied with the usual discipline. She made herself two iron chains, with which she inflicted such terrible wounds every night that her blood sprinkled the wall and flowed into the middle of the room. She died seven times: for her sins, for the souls who commit sins, for the pressing needs of the Church, for the time when Peru or Lima was threatened with great calamity, for the souls in purgatory, for those in agony of death, and as compensation for insults against God.

When her confessor, disturbed by the number of deaths, ordered her to stop using iron chains, she wrapped them in three rows and wore them on her body. She locked the chain on a padlock and threw the key in a corner where no one could find it. However, the chain soon passed through her skin and dug so deep into her flesh that her wounds remained visible until her death. One night, she felt such a terrible agony of pain that she fainted and was almost on the verge of death. Marianna, the helper, who woke up to her screams, quickly ran to her aid. Rose was now forced to tell the truth and asked her to help remove the chain before her mother entered the room. However, Mariana could not break the padlock. So she ran into the garden to find a stone and somehow broke it. While she was gone, Rose feared that her mother would enter the room. She began to pray. When Mariana entered the room with the stone, she saw a padlock separated from the chain links! Ruženka managed to do everything without much pain and loss of blood. Her wounds were almost healed, but she tightened the chain again. But as soon as it began to be carved into her body, the confessor ordered her to send it to him. She obeyed but suffered the same pain and blood loss as before. After her death, Maria of Usategui kept several embers of this bloody chain, which emitted such a sweet fragrance that everyone recognized it as supernatural. In addition to this chain, she wore the heaviest hairpin full of needles. She scourged herself with nettles and thorns, causing numerous wounds and blisters to form on her body. Tireless in her desire for pain, she decided to more accurately copy her Lord and Savior, whom they crowned with thorns. When she was young, she made a pewter crown with small, sha,rp nai, ls. She wore it for several years of innocent life. Later, she made a crown of silver plates as wide as three fingers, in which she placed three rows of sharp spikes, representing the 33 years of Jesus’ life on earth. She cut her hair so the spikes would dig into her head better. She wore the crown under her robes so that even the slightest movement of her body would cause these iron spikes to injure her body in 99 places. Every Friday, she tied this crown tighter and lower on her forehead until she pierced the cartilage of her ears in many places. From childhood, she invented many ways to make her bed harder until her mother forced her to sleep with it. Even then, she continued to be humble and obedient. As soon as the mother fell asleep, she gathered the feathers from the side of the bed she was lying on to lie on the wooden structure and put a stone under her head. After a long time, her mother, though displeased, allowed her to sleep as she pleased. Then, she made a bed in the form of a chest and filled it with rough stones of various sizes. However, the bed seemed too soft to her, so she added three bundles of wood and filled the space with three hundred pieces of broken tiles, which were placed so that the body was injured and torn. She never trembled in this terrible cross while the blood seemed to freeze in her veins. On these occasions, Jesus Christ often appeared to her to soothe her and speak in sweet and gracious words: “Remember, my child, that the cross on which I died for you was heavier, narrower, and more painful than the one on which you lie. Please think of the bile I drank because of you and remember the nails that pierced my hands and feet. Only then will you feel comfort in the terrible pains you are experiencing on your bed.” To live completely apart from men, she often stayed only in a small hermitage in her father’s garden, where she experienced many visions and miracles. Among others, Jesus Christ once appeared to her and took her as his bride in the presence of the Blessed Virgin, saying to her: “Rose of my heart, I take you as my bride.” Through spiritual prayer, in which she exercised herself in the deepest love of God, she attained the closest and most intimate union with Him and was never out of His holy presence. The birds themselves felt the influence of her sanctity and joined her devotion. One day, when she was ill, a little bird came and sat by the window of her room and began to sing, which so captivated her that she sincerely pondered the goodness of God who had given this little bird such sweet notes to sing praises to God. This put her in an ecstasy, in which she remained from nine in the morning until evening. In the year of her death, another bird whose song sounded the most beautiful sat in front of her room during the entire Lent period. As soon as the sun rose, blessed Rosa ordered him to light a fire in praise of God. He obeyed her and raised his voice, singing with all his might, until this servant of Christ, who did not want to be left behind, offered God a song of praise and blessing. She began to sing a hymn to his glory very sweetly. When she had finished, this little choir began again, and together, they formed a chorus in which they sang the praises of God alternately. At six o’clock, she released him until the next day. He always arrived on time.Our Saint loved Jesus Christ and His Most Holy Mother, the Virgin Mary, Saint Catherine of Siena, and her angel with such genuine love that they rewarded her. They visited her often and spoke to her in a friendly tone. They taught her how to gain victory over the evil spirits that appeared to her and tempted her to sin, appearing to her in special apparitions. This is how she learned that she was to die on St. Bartholomew’s Day. She did not know that she would die after reaching the age of 31, nor did she know that in the last moments of her life, she would have to endure incredible suffering. On August 1, she entered her room at night in perfect health. But at midnight, she was heard crying piteously, and the wife of Don Gonzalez, into whose house she had moved before her illness, found her half dead on the ground, cold, pulseless, motionless, scarcely breathing. The doctors came to see her in this condition and, together with her confessor, who feared that her humility prevented her from making clear the nature and extent of her sufferings, ordered her out of obedience to describe her feelings and pains to the doctors as best she could. “It seems to me,” she said, “as if a ball of fire had driven into my temples, descended to my legs, and passed through my left side over my right side in an intolerable heat—as if my heart had been torn asunder by a flaming dagger. The invisible hand that holds it sometimes pierces me from head to foot with it, and then walks from side to side and carves the form of a cross on my body with this instrument, which burns me with the hottest fire. I feel as if my bowels were being torn open with flaming tongs, and my head burns as if it were hot coals taken from a burning furnace. In fact, I believe that when I die, they will find my bones burned to ashes and the marrow dried up by the burning heat I endured.” All those present agreed that these sufferings were miraculous, and Ružena told them they were right and meant to be understood. ; Because they all came only from God and were sent as a special favor so she could become more like her Lord and Master. Although she had suffered so much, she begged her Divine Bridegroom not to ease her pain. On the contrary, she begged Him with all her heart to intensify them, to punish her severely for the crimes which she believed constituted sin in the eyes of God’s majesty. The merciful God had compassion on His servant and was moved by her tears and groans. He kept her mind sane to the last breath amid the depressions which the fever of the internal organs sent to her brain and which caused frequent delirium. Another kindness he imparted to her was her ability to express her feelings, although she suffered greatly. During her last days, she was often seen as if unconscious or in an ecstasy in which her soul seemed to leave her body to become more united with God. Despite extreme thirst, she did not taste a single drop of water to quench it. Following the example of her groom, she only asked for bile and vinegar to increase her suffering.During her illness, she usually confessed her sins every day. And to better prepare herself for death, she made a general confession of her whole life, with such signs of deep resentment that her sorrow and lamentations were heard in the adjoining rooms. She received the holy Viaticum and the last anointing on the third day. When the Blessed Sacrament was brought to her, she changed color. Her face lit up and burned, and amid the joy that filled her, she fell into ecstasy. After receiving this bread of angels, she remained motionless and completely rested in God. Almighty God revealed to her that her soul would immediately go to heaven after leaving the body and would not have to suffer the pain of purgatory. She often let herself be heard that she was a Christian and wanted to live in the faith of the Church and that she was the daughter of the great Saint Dominic. As proof of this, she reverently kissed the scapular and always wore it when sick. To imitate the love of the Son of God, she prayed with all her heart for those who offended her by word or deed, asking him to fill them with his graces and show them the same mercy that she experienced. Holding the holy cross in her hand, she could not calm herself without kissing it, softly repeating: “Father, forgive them.” She begged for mercy for all the servants in the house with tears in her eyes. She told Don González about herself that he would soon be freed from this unfortunate sinner (she meant herself) who had caused so much trouble and trouble to her whole family. Everything was translated into tears in the deep humility of this bride of Jesus Christ. At midnight of her death, she heard a mysterious noise that announced the coming of the Lord. She accepted him joyfully and asked her brother to remove the support from under her head and place a piece of wood in its place. As if she expected that these pieces of wood would also die on the cross. Twice she said: “Jesus, be with me, Jesus, be with me!” Immediately after that, her pure soul left her mortal body and flew into the bosom of God to receive the heavenly inheritance prepared for her from eternity. She died on August 24, the feast of St. Bartholomew in 1617, aged 31 years and five months. to fill them with his graces and show them the same mercy she experienced. Holding the holy cross in her hand, she could not calm herself without kissing it, softly repeating: “Father, forgive them.” She begged for mercy for all the servants in the house with tears in her eyes. She told Don González about herself that he would soon be freed from this unfortunate sinner (she meant herself) who had caused so much trouble and trouble to her whole family. Everything was translated into tears in the deep humility of this bride of Jesus Christ. At midnight of her death, she heard a mysterious noise that announced the coming of the Lord. She accepted him joyfully and asked her brother to remove the support from under her head and place a piece of wood in its place. As if she expected that these pieces of wood would also die on the cross. Twice she said: “Jesus, be with me, Jesus, be with me!” Immediately after that, her pure soul left her mortal body and flew into the bosom of God to receive the heavenly inheritance prepared for her from eternity. She died on August 24, the feast of St. Bartholomew in 1617, aged 31 years and five months. to fill them with his graces and show them the same mercy she experienced. Holding the holy cross in her hand, she could not calm herself without kissing it, softly repeating: “Father, forgive them.” She begged for mercy for all the servants in the house with tears in her eyes. She told Don González about herself that he would soon be freed from this unfortunate sinner (she meant herself) who had caused so much trouble and trouble to her whole family. Everything was translated into tears in the deep humility of this bride of Jesus Christ. At midnight of her death, she heard a mysterious noise that announced the coming of the Lord. She accepted him joyfully and asked her brother to remove the support from under her head and place a piece of wood in its place. As if she expected that these pieces of wood would also die on the cross. Twice she said: “Jesus, be with me, Jesus, be with me!” Immediately after that, her pure soul left her mortal body and flew into the bosom of God to receive the heavenly inheritance prepared for her from eternity. She died on August 24, the feast of St. Bartholomew in 1617, aged 31 years and five months.