The first two days were largely about Rose.
Today we begin turning our attention away from Rose and toward Jesus.
That is exactly what Rose would want.
Because if our journey ends with you thinking, "St. Rose was an extraordinary woman," we will have failed.
The goal is eventually to understand why Rose could look at Christ and say, in effect:
You are enough. I want to belong entirely to You.
Today we begin discovering why.
KNOW — Something more than religious enthusiasm
Rose grew up surrounded by Catholicism: Mass, saints, sacraments, processions, religious orders, preaching, devotions.
But there is a difference between living in a Catholic environment and falling in love with Christ.
Rose increasingly understood her relationship with Jesus in deeply personal terms.
Christ wasn't merely:
God whom she believed existed.
He became:
the One to whom she belonged.
This is why one of the most important ideas for understanding Rose is the ancient Christian idea of:
Christ the Bridegroom
That language can initially sound strange, especially to modern ears.
But it is profoundly biblical.
God describes His covenant with Israel using the imagery of marriage. Jesus identifies Himself with the bridegroom. St. Paul describes Christ's relationship with the Church in marital terms. Revelation culminates in the wedding feast of the Lamb.
And therefore throughout Christian history, mystics have understood the soul's union with Christ through this imagery.
Rose inherited this tradition.
So did her great spiritual model, Catherine of Siena.
For Rose, consecrated virginity wasn't fundamentally:
"I don't want to get married."
It was much closer to:
"I already belong to Someone."
That's completely different.
UNDERSTAND — Desire comes before sacrifice
This is where we need to correct our image of Rose.
If you begin her story with her fasting, mortifications and austerities, Rose can look almost incomprehensible.
But begin with love, and the pieces start fitting together.
Consider ordinary human love.
When someone falls deeply in love, strange things begin happening.
Time becomes less important.
You sacrifice sleep.
You rearrange schedules.
You travel farther than you normally would.
You spend money you would otherwise save.
You tolerate inconvenience.
You think repeatedly about the person.
And strangely, things that objectively cost something don't necessarily feel primarily like sacrifices.
Why?
Because love has changed their value.
This gives us an important spiritual principle:
Sacrifice becomes intelligible only when we understand what someone loves more than the sacrifice costs.
That is the doorway into Rose.
The mistake we often make about holiness
Many Christians unconsciously imagine the spiritual life this way:
Give up things → obey commandments → make sacrifices → become holy → eventually become close to God.
But the saints frequently reveal something closer to:
Encounter God → fall in love → desire Him → surrender what obstructs that love → become increasingly free → love even more deeply.
Notice what comes first.
God.
Grace comes first.
Love responds.
Sacrifice follows.
This is profoundly Catholic.
Christianity isn't fundamentally humanity struggling upward toward God.
It begins with God coming downward toward humanity.
Creation.
Covenant.
Incarnation.
Cross.
Resurrection.
Eucharist.
Grace.
And then our response:
"We love because he first loved us."
— 1 John 4:19
That single verse could serve as a key to Rose's entire life.
Now look at the Crucifix
Here we approach the center.
Rose developed an intense devotion to Christ crucified.
Modern Christians sometimes have difficulty understanding this.
Why dwell upon suffering?
Why contemplate wounds?
Why a crucifix rather than simply the risen Christ?
Because Rose wasn't primarily looking at pain.
She was looking at love made visible.
Think carefully about the Crucifix.
Christianity makes an astonishing claim.
The Person hanging there is not merely a good man who suffered unjustly.
He is the eternal Son of God.
Therefore the Crucifix says something about God Himself.
God is not distant from human suffering.
God enters it.
God does not merely command humanity to love Him.
He loves first.
And He loves at enormous cost.
So when Rose looked upon Christ crucified, the fundamental message wasn't:
"Look how much Jesus suffered. I should suffer too."
Before that comes:
"Look how much I am loved."
That changes everything.
An experiment
Imagine standing before the Crucifix and asking:
"Jesus, how much do You love me?"
Christianity's answer isn't primarily a sentence.
It points toward Calvary.
That much.
Arms extended.
Nothing withheld.
Rose spent enormous amounts of spiritual energy contemplating this mystery.
And eventually another question naturally follows:
If He withheld nothing from me, why am I withholding myself from Him?
Now Rose's radicalism begins making sense.
The Eucharistic Rose
Rose's love for Christ was also deeply Eucharistic.
This matters enormously.
Because Christianity could otherwise become admiration for a historical Jesus who lived 1,600 years before Rose.
But Catholicism says something much more startling.
The Christ of Calvary is present.
The same Jesus whom Rose loved is sacramentally present in the Eucharist.
Not symbolically present in the weak sense of "something that reminds us of Him."
Catholic faith confesses the Real Presence.
Body.
Blood.
Soul.
Divinity.
Therefore Rose's love wasn't merely:
"Jesus did something wonderful centuries ago."
It was:
"Jesus is here."
And that is the beginning of Eucharistic spirituality.
Now something becomes uncomfortable for us
Rose's world lacked many things we possess.
No smartphone.
No streaming entertainment.
No social media.
No endless news feed.
No algorithm designed to capture her attention.
Yet she still believed the human heart needed silence to perceive God.
What would Rose think of us?
Not because technology is evil.
It isn't.
But because many of us almost never experience interior silence.
The moment boredom appears:
phone.
The moment anxiety appears:
phone.
The moment loneliness appears:
phone.
The moment we're waiting:
phone.
The moment an uncomfortable thought appears:
distraction.
And eventually something tragic can happen.
God may be whispering.
But our interior world has become so noisy that we cannot hear Him.
Rose's solitude begins looking less strange.
The deeper issue: Do I love God—or merely believe in Him?
This is today's uncomfortable question.
Catholicism contains doctrines that must be believed.
But knowing doctrines about God is not identical with knowing God.
I can know:
Jesus is the Second Person of the Trinity.
Jesus has two natures.
Jesus instituted the Eucharist.
Jesus died for our sins.
Jesus rose bodily from the dead.
All true.
All essential.
And yet I can know all of that while my heart remains relatively untouched.
There is a difference between:
knowing that Jesus loves me
and
allowing myself to be loved by Jesus.
Rose crossed that distance.
And saints often make ordinary Christians uncomfortable precisely because they expose how easily we can settle for religion without intimacy.
PRAY — Today I want you to do something different
Don't read another biography of Rose today.
Don't research her miracles.
Don't even pray primarily to Rose.
Instead, Rose is going to lead you somewhere.
Find a crucifix.
Preferably go somewhere you can be alone.
If possible, spend 10 minutes.
Put away your phone after reading these instructions.
Look at Jesus.
For the first two minutes, say nothing.
Simply look.
When your mind wanders, return to Him.
Then slowly ask:
"Jesus, what do You want me to understand about Your love for me?"
Don't manufacture an answer.
Don't imagine that every thought that enters your head is God speaking.
Simply remain available.
After several minutes, say:
Jesus, I believe You love me.
Help me receive that love, not merely understand it.
Then look at the Crucifix again.
Finally ask:
"What am I still afraid to give You?"
That question may produce something.
Or nothing.
Either is fine.
End with an Our Father.
LIVE — A small experiment in love
Yesterday I asked you to practice one tiny act of detachment.
Today we add something.
Do one thing for Jesus that nobody else knows about.
Something small.
Help someone without mentioning it.
Do an unpleasant household task.
Give up a convenience.
Pray briefly for someone who irritates you.
Allow someone else to receive credit.
Give something quietly.
Resist telling anyone afterward.
And while doing it, say internally:
"Jesus, this is for You."
This introduces you to something Rose understood extremely well:
hidden love.
Our culture frequently turns goodness into performance.
We post.
We announce.
We document.
We receive affirmation.
Hidden sacrifice removes the audience.
And then an extraordinary question appears:
Would I still do this if Jesus were the only one who knew?
Rose wanted the answer to become yes.
One danger we must avoid
As your devotion to Rose grows, don't begin thinking:
"I should become extreme."
That would misunderstand her.
The Church does not canonize every individual decision a saint made.
Canonization means that a person lived heroic Christian virtue and is with God; it does not mean every ascetical practice is universally prudent or meant for imitation.
This distinction will become crucial when we examine Rose's severe mortifications.
For now, imitate the safest and deepest thing about her:
Take Jesus seriously.
Not Rose's crown of thorns.
Not her fasting.
Not her sleeplessness.
Not yet.
Start where she started:
Christ.
Your Rose journal — Entry 3
I recommend keeping a small notebook through these twelve days.
Tonight write only three sentences.
Complete these:
1. When I look at the Crucifix, I see ________.
2. The thing I find hardest to entrust completely to Jesus is ________.
3. If I truly believed Jesus were enough, I would ________.
Don't write what you think a good Catholic should answer.
Write what is actually true.
That distinction is essential to genuine prayer.
What Rose has taught us so far
Day 1:
Rose became convinced Jesus was worth everything.
Day 2:
She began loosening the things that competed with God for her heart.
Today:
She could surrender because she increasingly understood that she had already been loved first.
And that brings us to a crucial point.
Rose was beautiful.
People noticed her.
Marriage was available.
Her family had expectations.
She possessed a body, reputation, future, ambitions and ordinary human desires.
Yet she increasingly refused to allow any of these things to tell her who she was.
Why?
Because another identity was becoming stronger:
I belong to Christ.
Tomorrow we will explore one of the most surprisingly contemporary dimensions of Rose's spirituality.
Day 4 — Beauty, Identity and Detachment
We will look at Rose's struggle with physical beauty, other people's approval and her desire to belong completely to Christ—but we'll go considerably deeper.
The question will become:
If my achievements disappeared, my appearance changed, people stopped admiring me, my position vanished, and everything I use to prove my worth were removed—would knowing that I am loved by God still be enough?
That question takes us very close to the heart of Christian freedom.
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