The path that leads to saintliness is, it is true, a straight and narrow one; but it has its pure joys, and peace, and beauties, and consolations.  Many were the extraordinary graces which God bestowed upon this holy American lady; and Christ once in a vision called her soul his Spouse.

 

"The more a man is united within himself, and interiorly simple," writes the author of The Imitation of Christ, "the more and higher things does he understand without labor, for he receives the light of understanding from above.  A pure, simple, and steady spirit is not dissipated by a multitude of affairs, because he performs them all to the honor of God, and endeavors to be at rest within himself, and free from all seeking of himself."

 

It was thus with Rose of Lima.  The supernatural lights with which God enriched her understanding inflamed her heart with so ardent a love for prayer, that even sleep itself could not distract her from it.  So completely absorbed was her imagination in this holy exercise, that she was often heard to repeat while asleep the same number of vocal prayers as she had said during the day.

 

She meditated every day for three hours on the benefits of God, and the countless graces she had received from His mercy.  Her vocal prayer was continual.  Indeed, it is beyond the power of our imagination to conceive how, though the presence of God entirely engrossed all the interior powers of her soul, she still acted in exterior things with great presence of mind, giving the proper answers to questions, and carefully finishing any work she commenced.  When in church she kept her eyes fixed on the altar, and never looked at anything else.  Thus, according to the advice of the Holy Book, she kept God in her mind all the days of her life.

 

The Almighty rewarded this purity and simplicity of mind by giving her a deep insight into the most profound mysteries of religion.  Some learned theologians hearing of this, had the curiosity to converse with her on such sublime subjects as the Blessed Trinity, the Incarnation, grace, and predestination; and after a long conference, they confessed that they had never known a more enlightened soul, and that the Saint had not acquired the knowledge of these elevated truths of faith by the vivacity of her mind, or by application to study.

 

But there is another feature in her career to which we must devote a few words . As thorns spring forth with roses, so grief and pain seem to have been born with the blessed Rose.  Her life was one long chain of sufferings, sickness, pains, and crosses, which exercised her patience from the cradle to the tomb by a tedious martyrdom.

 

The sweet disposition and religious spirit of the Saint were often severely tried by the passionate temper of her mother, who found fault with everything her daughter did.  She condemned her reserve, blamed her fasts, disliked her taking up so much time in prayer and retirement so opposed to the maxims of the world; and for these reasons she often scolded Rose, and went so far as to use a thousand abusive epithets, as if she had been an infamous person.  At the least provocation she gave her blows on the cheek, but when she was carried away by the fury of anger, she put no bounds to her malicious abuse.  She even assailed her daughter with blows and kicks; and on one occasion she took a thick, knotty stick and struck her with all her strength.  She began to treat Rose thus when she cut off her hair, after having consecrated her virginity to God, and she continued the same treatment on many other occasions.

 

Those with whom the holy heroine lived were also actuated towards her by the vilest feelings of envy and vexation, and all because they saw her lead a life so different from theirs.  To disoblige and annoy her, they did everything in their power.  They even threatened to report her to the Inquisition as a deluded girl and a hypocrite, who was deceiving the world by a false appearance of virtue!

 

Sickness came upon her in all sorts of shapes.  She was three years in bed a paralytic, suffering great torture without shedding a tear, or making the least complaint. These diseases arose from different causes, which all united in her body to give her an increase of torture.  Even the physicians were surprised to see her suffer so long, sometimes from tertian, sometimes from quartan fevers, which made her burn with heat and then shiver with cold; for so dried up and attenuated was her body that there seemed to be scarcely anything remaining to nourish fever.

 

On her part, this heroic woman adored the hand of God in her infirmities, acknowledging that they did not proceed in her from any derangement of the system, as is the case with others, but from the particular dispensation of Christ, who sent them to exercise her patience and to furnish her with opportunities of grace and merit.  She was a daughter of affliction.  But in the midst of her pains and sorrows, she would look at her crucifix, and exclaim: "Oh, Jesus, increase my sufferings, but increase also Thy divine love in my soul!"

 

Her charity was boundless.  One day when she had nothing to give a poor woman, who begged her for the love of God to give her some old clothes to cover her poor little half-naked children, Rose took a large cloak belonging to her mother, and without any permission beyond that which she interiorly received from God, who inspired her to perform this action, she bestowed it upon the unhappy mendicant.  Her mother was displeased with this sort of liberality; but the Saint humbly entreated her not to be uneasy; and assured her that Almighty God would make her a return far beyond the cost of her cloak.  Nor was she deceived in her expectations.  During the same day a stranger came in and gave her fifty pieces of money.  Three days after, a lady sent her by a servant a piece of cloth large enough to make another cloak; and the Dominicans added to this by sending her another fine piece of cloth.

 

Rose made herself the attendant and infirmarian of the poor. She took home with her Jane de Bovadilla, a young orphan lady, who, besides her great poverty, had a cancer in her breast, of which no one could bear the insupportable odor.  God revealed her condition to the Saint.  She went immediately to see the unfortunate girl, offered to wait, upon her, and that she might be able to do it, she persuaded her to come to her father’s house, where she could render her every kind of assistance.  Still, as the Saint knew that her mother was a little too much attached to her own interests, she told her patient that she would hire a room in the house, and that she would give her the money to pay for herself, only requiring that the young lady should keep this a secret.  Rose hired the room, brought Miss de Bovadilla to it, charitably waited upon her, and worked more than usual to obtain the money necessary for the payment of the lodging, which the young lady did not quit till she was perfectly recovered.

 

A little while after, her mother became acquainted with the foregoing case, and gave her leave to bring home sick persons.  On receiving this permission, Rose exercised her charity towards the poor women and girls whom she met in the streets, whatever might be their condition.  Nor was she satisfied with merely giving them a lodging.  She nursed them, made their beds, dressed their ulcers, washed their clothes, and, in short, rendered them every sort of service, making no distinction between the Spaniard and the Indian, the free and the slave, the European or the African Negro.

 

We are told in the Holy Book that the shadow of St. Peter restored the sick to health.  The mere sight of our Saint often effected a cure.  On one occasion Don John d'Almansa, a gentleman of high rank, being dangerously ill, desired very much to speak to Rose once more before he died.  She went to see him, to afford him this satisfaction.  When the saintly lady entered his room, he remarked quite a heavenly beauty on her pure countenance, from which he conceived a firm hope that she would obtain his cure from Almighty God, who alone could raise him from the sad state to which he was reduced.  While she was speaking to him, he fell asleep with this consoling thought in his mind, and awoke as perfectly recovered as if he had never been ill!

 

Like her charity, our Saint's childlike confidence in God was wonderful.  One day, seeing that there was no money in the house to buy provisions, or a bit of bread to eat, she went to open the chest in the assurance that the Almighty, who never abandons those who trust in him, would provide for those so dear to her.  She was not deceived.  She found the bread-chest full of loaves, whiter and of a different shape from the ones they were accustomed to eat.

 

On another occasion the supply of honey—which is much used in Peru—having failed, and her brothers having brought word that there was not a single drop remaining, Rose, full of confidence in God, went to the place, and found the vessel quite full of excellent honey.  It lasted the family eight months.

 

When her father, Gasper Florez, was sick and weighed down with sorrow at not being able to pay the sum of fifty livres which he owed, and which he was pressed to return, Rose was informed of the affair.  She went to the church and begged of Christ to assist him on the occasion, and not to allow her parent to be put to confusion. As she returned she saw a stranger enter the house.  He gave her father a little purse, which contained precisely the sum wanted to satisfy his creditor.  On many other occasions, in the great necessities to which her family was often reduced, God favored its members by miraculous means, to reward the Saint's admirable confidence in His almighty power and goodness.

 

Rose learned by revelation that she would die on the Festival of St. Bartholomew, and when she reached her thirty-first year—which she knew she would not live to complete —she made the wife of Don Gonzalez, her great benefactor and the protector of her family, acquainted with the day and place of her death.  She was in perfect health when she communicated this sad intelligence.

 

God likewise enlightened our Saint as to the extreme sufferings she was to endure at the close of her holy and humble life.  He showed her their number, and revealed to her that her pains would be so violent that each member of her body would have its own particular torment.  She was told that she would have to suffer the same thirst which tormented our Blessed Redeemer on the Cross, and also a burning heat which would dry up the very marrow in her bones. But the heroine trembled not at the thought of this woeful species of martyrdom.

 

On the night of the 1st of August, Rose retired to her room in perfect health; but at midnight she was heard piteously crying and moaning.  The wife of Don Gonzalez, at whose house she lived, hastened to the Saint's room, and found her extended on the floor, half dead, cold, pulseless, motionless, and scarcely breathing.

 

Skilled physicians were at once summoned; and after a most careful diagnosis they all declared that her infirmities and sufferings were beyond human endurance, and that such a union of incompatible symptoms was something truly miraculous.  They were of opinion, in short, that her illness was not natural, but that the hand of God had sent the torments which thus afflicted His servant.  As for Rose herself, in the midst of her agonies of pain, she exhibited the greatest peace of mind, and continually thanked all who attended her for their kindness and devotion.

 

At length, her last hour arrived. It was towards midnight, and a mysterious noise warned her that the angel of death had come.  She received the announcement with joy.  Just before expiring, she requested her brother to remove the bolster from beneath her head, and to place some pieces of wood in its stead.  He complied, and she thanked him for this last act of kindness.  She placed her head upon the pieces of wood, to die, as it were, upon a sort of Cross, and said twice, "Jesus be with me!" and thus passed away to its heavenly home the pure and beautiful soul of America's first Saint, Rose of Lima.  Her precious death took place on the 24th of August, the Feast of St. Bartholomew, in the year 1617.

 

So lovely did death itself appear upon her countenance, that those who remarked the freshness of her complexion and the redness of her lips, which were separated so as to form a pleasing smile, doubted for a long time whether her soul had really quitted the body.  They beheld so much brightness in her eyes, and such apparent marks of life, that they could not be satisfied till they had placed a mirror before her mouth, and perceived that she did not in the least tarnish it with her breath.  Then they knew that their holy friend had forever bade adieu to the scenes of this world.

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On the same night a lady named Aloysia de Serrano had a revelation of the Saint's death; and as Rose and she had promised one another, that the one who died first would make it known to the other.  Rose kept her word and informed her friend of her death and of the happiness she enjoyed.—Father Feuillet, 0. P.

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MIRACLES AND CANONIZATION.