Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Naomh An Lae - Saint Of The Day

roseoflima St Rose of Lima (1586-1617) third order Dominican

St Rose of Lima, Peru, lived an extraordinary life of holiness and self-denial. 

She is the first canonised saint of the Americas.   

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.