THE entire city of Lima mourned her death—the archbishop, Spanish nobles, viceroy, clergy, Negroes, Indian beggars and slaves. The viceroy had to send private guards to maintain order.
Six times, Saint Rose had to be dressed in her black and white habit, for the people scissored her dress for relics, while touching her for healings. She had to be moved to the church of Saint Dominic to accommodate crowds beyond Lima, Peru. In the Requiem Mass, the voices of the Archbishop and the choir were drowned by people who prayed.
That she should be buried a few hours after death as a norm in the country met violent protests. But after three days, at noontime when siesta was customary, the clergy buried her under an “unmarked slab in the cloister.”
This is how Mary Alphonsus, OSSR, in Saint Rose of Lima, described the wake and burial of the saint.
It is Rose not Isabel
Baptized as Isabel de Flores y del Oliva, she was called Rose by her mother because of her red cheeks and who, likewise, saw a vision of a pink rose over her cradle.
When she was about five years old, her mother taught her how to read and write but soon lost her patience.
“There’s plenty of time for you to learn, and there’s just one thing that’s really important—knowing what is good and doing it,” her mother said.
So, Rose prayed to the statue of the child Christ in her mother’s room, to be more useful to others. She prayed for the gift of reading and one day surprised the family of her new-found skill, narrated Mary Fabyan Windeatt in Saint Rose of Lima.
When she was 11, the family moved to Quivi, a small mining town near Lima but returned when business was bad.
Quivi left a sad impression on Rose, the Indians believed that the sun is God. Ignorant about God’s love, she wanted desperately to save their souls. And the only way she knew was to pray and offer sufferings.
In Lima, she tended a flower garden, made embroidery and needlework to augment the income of the family. She gave to the poor, mixtures of herbs for cure.
She played the guitar and harp, sang her own verses and prayed in a little altar she made in the garden. She read a book about Saint Catherine of Sienna and desired to be a Dominican Tertiary.
Her mother thought she was praying too much and desired that she get married to one of her suitors to help bail out the family from poverty. Her father banned her desire to enter any convent. As a result, a cold war ensued between them for 10 years, noted Father Anthony Neticat, CM, in Saints for Everyday.
She cut her beautiful curls, and deliberately disfigured herself. She rubbed pepper on her face and shapely fingers.
Self-imposed sufferings
One night, she heard screams and saw a dirty Indian woman with a hurting knee. She brought her to their house and fed her. This was the start of her infirmary for the sick and the poor of Lima.
To cure the sick she would hold the little statue of the child Jesus and prayed for their healing. In her soul she would hear the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Lord and angels talk of love, mortification and suffering. She remembers Saint Catherine of Sienna’s words so well: “A sinner makes up for the sin himself in Purgatory or in this world or someone does so for him.”
And Rose, in sincerity, would pray: “I want to make up for people’s sin, Lord, just tell me what you wish me to do.”
To satisfy her mother’s whim, she wore a crown of roses on her head, but beneath, she placed pins to “unite the slight discomfort with the torments of Jesus crowned with thorns.” The roses were later changed to a penitential band beneath her veil with silver nails, flat and smooth as instrument of penance but opened no wounds, according to Sister Alphonsus.
She also emulated Saint Catherine of Sienna, fasting thrice a week with perpetual abstinence from meat.
She wore a chain around her waist, and carried a heavy cross as she walks around the flower garden of their house, in remembrance of Christ’s journey to Calvary.
While she had mystical experiences and charismatic gifts, she also suffered diabolical attacks and temptations.
While praying on Palm Sunday in 1610, she heard Jesus say: “Rose of my heart, be thou my spouse.”
Her dream of living like a hermit was fulfilled when she was 28 years old. His brother, Ferdinand, before he left to be a soldier in Chile, built an adobe house for her in the garden. It was a 5-feet long, 4-feet wide, 6-feet high with a low door enough for Rose to crawl in. Rose predicted that her mother would spend the last days of her life wearing the habit of a Dominican religious before she dies. Indeed, her mother was instrumental in building the Monastery of Saint Catalina, the first Dominican Convent in 1624, before her death.
She, likewise, was able to foretell the day of her own death, August 24, 1617, at the age of 31, and requested her benefactor, Doña Maria, to give her water for she would be tormented with great thirst, while dying.
Among the first to arrive when she died was Alfonsa Serrano, an intimate friend, with whom she made a pact that whoever dies first was to appear for prayers.
So Rose did, woke Alfonsa to say, “I have entered paradise.”
She was canonized by Pope Clement X in 1671 and was proclaimed patroness of the Americas, the West Indies and the Philippines.
Her feast day is August 23.
Santiago is a former regional director of the Department of Education National Capital Region. She is currently a faculty member of Mater Redemptoris College in Laguna.
Image credits: Wikimedia Commons