SANTA ROSA DE
LIMA
(Isabel Flores de Oliva, Lima, 1586 - 1617)
Peruvian religious of the order of the Dominicans who was the first
saint of America. After having
shown signs of intense spiritual precocity, at the age of twenty he took the
habit of Dominican tertiary, and devoted his life to the attention of the sick and
children and to ascetic practices, the fame of his sanctity soon extending.
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Santa
Rosa de Lima Patron of the Americas
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Venerated
already in life by her mystical visions and by the miracles that were
attributed to her, in little more than half a century she was canonized by the
Catholic Church, which declared her patron saint of Lima and Peru, and shortly
after America, the Philippines and the East Indies.
Biography
Santa Rosa de
Lima was born on April 20, 1586 in the vicinity of the Hospital del Espíritu
Santo in the city of Lima, then capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru. She was the daughter of Gaspar Flores (an
arcabucero of the natural viceregal guard of San Juan de Puerto Rico) and of
the Maria de Oliva from Lima, who in the course of their marriage gave her
husband twelve other children. He received
baptism in the parish of San Sebastián de Lima, being his godparents Hernando de
Valdés and María Orozco.
In the company of her
numerous brothers, the girl Rosa moved to the mountain town of Quives (Andean
town of the Chillón basin, near Lima) when her father took over the job of
managing a work where silver ore was refined. The biographies
of Santa Rosa de Lima have vividly retained the fact that in Quives, which was
the doctrine of Mercedarian friars, the future saint received in 1597 the
sacrament of confirmation from the hands of the Archbishop of Lima, Santo Toribio Alfonso de
Mogrovejo , who made a pastoral visit in the jurisdiction.
Although she
had been baptized as Isabel Flores de Oliva, in the confirmation she received
the name of Rosa, nickname that her relatives practically used since her birth
for her beauty and for a vision that her mother had, in which the girl's face
became in a rose. Santa Rosa
would assume this name definitively later, when he understood that it was
"rose from the garden of Christ" and adopted the religious
denomination of Rosa de Santa María.
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Santa Rosa
in the Chapel of her Church
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Occupying the
"dark stage" in the biography of Santa Rosa de Lima, which
corresponds precisely to his childhood and early adolescence in Quives, Luis
Millones has tried to shed new light by interpreting some dreams
that biographers of the saint gather. Millions believe that this could be
the most important stage for the formation of his personality, despite the fact
that the authors have preferred to abstract from the economic environment and
from the cultural experiences that conditioned the life of the Flores-Oliva
family in the sierra, in a mining seat linked to the core of colonial
production. Probably that experience (the daily vision of the
sufferings suffered by the Indian workers) could be the one that gave Rosa the
concern to remedy the diseases and miseries of those who would later believe in
her virtue.
In Lima
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| A devotee writes her
wish to Ranta Rosa de Lima |
Already since
her childhood, the future saint had shown her religious vocation and a singular
spiritual elevation. He had
learned music, song and poetry from the hand of his mother, who was dedicated
to instructing the daughters of the nobility. It is said
that she was well equipped for sewing, with which she would help sustain the
family budget. With the return of the family to the Peruvian
capital, I would soon stand out for its selfless dedication to others and for
its extraordinary mystic gifts.
At that time,
Lima lived an atmosphere of religious effervescence to which Santa Rosa was not
stranger: it was a time in which the attributions of miracles, cures and all
kinds of wonders abounded on the part of a population that put great emphasis
on the virtues and ideal of Christian life. Around sixty
people died in the "smell of holiness" in the Peruvian capital
between the late sixteenth and mid-eighteenth centuries. This led to a long series of biographies of saints,
blesseds and servants of God, works very similar in content, governed by the
same formal structures and analogous categories of thought.
In adolescence, Santa Rosa
was attracted with singular strength by the model of the Dominican Saint Catherine of Siena (Tuscan
mystic of the fourteenth century); Following her
example, she stripped off her attractive hair and made a vow of perpetual
chastity, contrary to the plans of her parents, whose idea was to marry her. After much insistence, the parents gave up their
purpose and allowed him to continue his spiritual life. He wanted to
join the Dominican order, but since there was no convent of the order in the
city, in 1606 he took the Dominican tertiary habit in the church of Santo
Domingo in Lima.
He would never be confined
to a convent; Rosa continued to live with her family, helping
with household chores and caring for people in need. Soon he had
great fame for his virtues, which he expounded throughout a life dedicated to
the Christian education of children and the care of the sick; He came to install a hospital near his home to be
able to assist them better. In these
tasks he apparently helped a mulatto friar who, like her, was destined to be
raised to the altars: San Martin de Porres .
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The devotee leaves her request
in the well of
desire
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The people
with whom Rosa came to have some intimacy were very few. In its narrowest circle were virtuous women like
Dona Luisa Melgarejo and her group of "beatas", along with friends
from the father's house and close to the home of the accountant Gonzalo de la
Maza. The confessors of Santa Rosa de Lima were mostly
priests of the Dominican congregation. He also had
spiritual contact with religious of the Society of Jesus. It is also important the contact he developed with
Dr. Juan del Castillo, an Extremaduran doctor well versed in matters of
spirituality, with whom he shared the most secret minutiae of his relationship
with God. These spiritual advisers exercised profound
influence on Rosa.
It is not surprising, of course,
that his mother, Maria de Oliva, abominated the cohort of priests who
surrounded her pious daughter, because she was sure that the ascetic rigors
that she imposed on herself were "because of this view, ignorant credulity
and judgment of some confessors, "as a contemporary recalls. The stereotypical behavior of Santa Rosa de Lima
becomes more evident even when it is noticed that, by order of his
confessors, he wrote down the various grants he had received from Heaven, thus
composing the panel entitled Spiritual ladder. Not much is known about the readings of Santa Rosa,
although it is known that he found inspiration in the theological works of Fray Luis de Granada .
Last years
Towards 1615,
and with the help of his favorite brother, Hernando Flores de Herrera, he built
a small cell or hermitage in the garden of his parents' house.There, in a space
of just over two square meters (which can still be seen today), Santa Rosa de
Lima was collected with relish to pray and do penance, practicing a severe
asceticism, with a crown of thorns under the veil, nailed hair to the wall so
as not to fall asleep, gall as a drink, rigorous fasts and constant
disciplines.
His
biographers say that his mystical experiences and states of ecstasy were very
frequent. Apparently, every week he experienced an ecstasy
similar to that of Santa Catalina de Ricci, his contemporary and sister of
habit; it is said that every Thursday morning he locked
himself in his oratory and did not come to himself until Saturday morning. Several gifts were also attributed to him, such as
prophecy (according to tradition, he prophesied his death a year before); Legend
has it that he even saved the Peruvian capital from a raid by pirates.
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Mass to Santa Rosa, celebrated by a Mexican priest
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Santa Rosa de Lima suffered
at that time the misunderstanding of family and friends and suffered stages of
deep emptiness, but all of this resulted in an intense spiritual experience,
full of ecstasies and wonders, such as communication with plants and animals,
without ever losing joy of his spirit (fond of composing love songs with
mystical symbolism) and the beauty of his face. He thus
reached the highest level of the mystical scale, spiritual marriage: tradition
tells that, in the church of Santo Domingo, he saw Jesus Christ , and this one asked him to be his wife. On March 26, 1617, his mystical betrothal to Christ
was celebrated in the church of Santo Domingo de Lima, with Fray Alonso
Velásquez (one of his confessors) who put on his fingers the symbolic ring as a
sign of perpetual union.
With all success, Rosa had predicted that his life would end at the home
of his benefactor and confidante Gonzalo de la Maza (accountant of the tribunal
of the Holy Crusade), in which he resided in recent years. A few months after that mystical betrothal, Santa
Rosa de Lima fell seriously ill and was affected by acute hemiplegia. Dona Maria de Uzátegui, the Madrid counter wife,
admired her; before dying, Santa Rosa requested that she be the
one who shrouded her.Around his bed of agony was the marriage of La
Maza-Uzátegui with his two daughters, Dona Micaela and Dona Andrea, and one of
his closest disciples, Luisa Daza, whom Santa Rosa de Lima asked to sing a song
with accompaniment of vihuela. The Virgin of
Lima thus gave her soul to God, on August 24, 1617, in the early hours of the
morning; I was only 31 years old.
On the same
day of his death, in the afternoon, the body of Santa Rosa was transferred to
the large convent of the Dominicans, called Nuestra Señora del Rosario. His funeral was impressive because of its resonance
among the capital's population. A motley
crowd filled the roadways, balconies and rooftops in the nine blocks that
separated the street from the Capón (where the residence of Gonzalo de la Maza
was) of that temple. The following
day, August 25, there was a mass of present body officiated by Don Pedro de
Valencia, bishop-elect of La Paz, and then proceeded stealthily to bury the
remains of the saint in a room of the convent, without bells or bells any ceremony,
to avoid the agglomeration of the faithful and curious.
The process
that led to the beatification and canonization of Rosa de Lima began almost
immediately, with the information of witnesses promoted in 1617-1618 by the archbishop of Lima, Bartolomé Lobo Guerrero. After five decades of procedure, Pope Clement IX
beatified her in 1668, and a year later declared her patron saint of
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Santa Rosa, Patron of the
National Police of Peru
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