Sharing materials I saw to get to know St. Rose of Lima beyond "facts and trivia" to a deeper knowledge towards growth in love for God. Enjoy!
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Forget the halo for a moment.
Forget the roses.
Forget the statues.
And meet a little girl named Isabel Flores de Oliva.
She was born in Lima, Peru, in 1586. Her parents were Gaspar Flores and Oliva de Herrera. "Rose" was not originally her baptismal name. According to early traditions surrounding her life, she came to be called Rosa because of an incident in infancy in which her face was said to have appeared like a rose.
Eventually, Rose herself resisted the name.
That small detail is already revealing.
She didn't want to be admired simply because she was beautiful.
Yet the name eventually acquired a religious significance for her, and she came to accept Rosa de Santa María — Rose of Saint Mary.
Rose of Lima would become extraordinary.
But her circumstances weren't.
Her family experienced financial difficulty. She worked. She embroidered and cultivated flowers to help support the household. Her parents had expectations for her future, including marriage. Rose increasingly believed God was calling her elsewhere.
She was not a nun in the way we normally imagine.
She became a Dominican tertiary—a laywoman associated with Dominican spirituality—and lived much of her remarkable spiritual life at her family's home.
That point is enormously important.
Rose became a mystic without escaping ordinary life.
There were parents.
Work.
Money problems.
Family disagreements.
Expectations.
Household responsibilities.
And in the middle of all that:
God.
But there was something unusual happening inside Rose
From a remarkably young age, Rose developed an intense attraction toward prayer, solitude, sacrifice and especially Jesus Christ.
And "intense" is the appropriate word.
Rose wasn't mildly religious.
She became consumed with God.
Eventually she would undertake extraordinary austerities—fasting, sleep deprivation and bodily mortification—that require careful interpretation. Some practices should not simply be copied, and when we reach Session 6 we're going to examine them seriously.
Because if we reduce Rose to:
"She hurt herself because she loved Jesus"
we have badly misunderstood Catholic asceticism—and probably Rose herself.
Something deeper was happening.
The first key to understanding Rose
Here is the first thing I want you to remember about her.
Rose's story is not primarily about suffering.
It is about love.
The suffering only makes sense after the love.
She became fascinated by Christ—particularly Christ crucified—and increasingly came to believe:
If Christ has given Himself completely to me, then I want to give myself completely to Him.
That desire explains much of what follows.
Not:
"How much pain can I endure?"
but:
"Jesus, how completely can I belong to You?"
That distinction will become crucial.
Rose's great teacher
There is another woman you need to meet because she provides one of the keys to Rose's spirituality.
Catherine of Siena.
Rose deeply admired Catherine.
The parallels are striking: Dominican spirituality, virginity dedicated to Christ, intense prayer, asceticism, mystical experiences, concern for others and a profound identification with the suffering Christ.
In a sense, Catherine became Rose's spiritual elder.
And eventually Rose can become something similar for us.
That is one of the beautiful Catholic ideas behind devotion to saints.
We don't merely admire dead Christians.
The Communion of Saints means that those united to Christ remain members of His living Body.
Therefore devotion ultimately says:
"Rose, you learned to love Jesus. Teach me."
Not:
"Rose, replace Jesus."
But:
"Rose, take me where you went."
And where she went was toward Christ.
Your first encounter with Rose
Today I don't want you doing much.
Find somewhere quiet.
If possible, place yourself before a crucifix.
Spend perhaps five minutes simply looking at Christ crucified.
Don't analyze anything.
Then ask yourself:
What would make someone love this Man so much that He became the organizing center of her entire life?
Rose apparently discovered an answer.
We are going to spend the rest of this journey discovering what she discovered.
Then pray very simply:
St. Rose of Lima,
I don't know you yet.
But you knew Jesus.If God permits it, become my friend and teacher.
Teach me what you discovered in Christ.
Teach me to love Him rather than merely know about Him.And whatever in your life points toward Jesus,
help me see it clearly.Pray that I may desire God
more deeply than I do today.Amen.
Then remain silent for a minute or two.
Don't manufacture an experience.
If absolutely nothing happens, that's perfectly fine.
You've begun.
One thing to carry today
Don't try to remember dates yet.
Don't remember the extreme penances.
Don't even remember all the biographical details.
Remember just this:
Rose was a woman who became convinced that Jesus Christ was worth giving everything for.
Our next question is therefore not yet "What did she give up?"
It is:
"What did Rose see in Christ that made Him worth everything?"
That will take us into Session 2: The World That Formed Rose—Lima, her family, colonial Catholicism, the Dominicans, the tensions and injustices surrounding her, and the surprisingly complicated world in which this extraordinary young woman learned to seek God.
And as we progress, I'll deliberately distinguish well-attested history, early hagiographical traditions, theological interpretation, and later devotional stories. That matters if we're going to develop a mature devotion rather than a sentimentalized picture of Rose.
