St. Rose of Lima  Flower of the new World
 
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by F. M. Capes, 1899



We may not say that St. Rose was the first saint of the New World, for God only knows His own; but she was the first of America's children to be placed in the calendar of canonized saints--the first flower gathered from that part of the great garden over which St. Dominic has been placed as the husbandman of Jesus Christ.

Almost before she was out of her infancy, that love of Our Lord's suffering, which was afterwards to become the ruling passion of her life, began to lay hold of little Rose's heart. How God speaks to the baby souls of those early-chosen children of His special delight; by what channels the Divine secrets are imparted to their barely-opened minds; what marvelous gift enables them to entertain and understand thoughts far beyond their years--we cannot know; but that such special communications are made to some of the Saints even as little children is certain.

In St. Rose's case the working of these mysterious operations in her heart was witnessed to by the fact that, as a little thing barely able to walk, she would often be found, having managed to escape from her guardians or companions, absorbed in deep infantine contemplation before a picture of the thorn-crowned Christ, in His mantle of scorn, which hung in her mother's room.

Her own apprenticeship in her Master's school, too, began early; for from the time that she was three years old Rose de Flores was the subject of one accident or complaint after another, and was kept perpetually in states of suffering which were sharp trials to her childish patience.

This ideal she realized in her life. It is this life of penance and mysticism which is presented to the reader in these pages. Everything in her life calls for admiration, many things for imitation, some, maybe, for explanation. The reader of this record of her ways and works will perforce exclaim: 'Wonderful is God in His saints'--wonderful in their number, in their graces, in their variety.

St. Rose's life was eminently wonderful in its marvelous penance, its deep, earnest, and all but continuous prayer, its perfect union with God. She studied in the school of Christ; her book was the Cross; her Master the Crucified. Naturally of delicate health, weak in body, and physically feeble, hers was a life of chronic suffering. To this she added much fasting, abstinence, and penances of every kind, as will be seen from the perusal of this interesting and instructive life. But all her sufferings, whether sent by God or self-inflicted, were borne for God, with God, and in God.

She could say with the Apostle: 'With Christ I am nailed to the Cross; and I live, now not I, but Christ liveth in me. Her suffering life was a life of detachment from the world--a life of union with God. If she could make her own the words of St. Paul, 'The world is crucified to me, and I to the world, she could add with equal truth, 'I live in the faith of the Son of God, Who loved me and delivered Himself for me.'







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