From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   August 23rd - Saint Rose Of Lima, Virgin   
      
   (1586-1617)   
      
   This lovely flower of sanctity, the first canonized Saint of the New World,   
   was born at Lima, Peru, in 1586. She was christened Isabel, but the beauty   
   of her infant face earned for her the title of Rose, which she thereafter   
   bore. As a child still in the cradle, her silence during a painful surgical   
   operation seemed to foretell the thirst for suffering which would consume   
   her heart.   
      
   At an early age she engaged herself as a servant to support her impoverished   
   parents, then worked day and night. In spite of hardships and austerities   
   her beauty ripened with increasing age, and she was openly much admired.   
   Fearing vanity would enter her heart, she cut off her hair, blistered her   
   face with pepper and her hands with lime. She never left the interior of her   
   parents' house in Canta, for four years, not even to walk in an inviting   
   garden just beyond its walls. She finally obtained her parents' permission   
   to be enrolled in the Third Order of Saint Dominic; from her childhood she   
   had taken Saint Catherine of Siena as her model, and she then redoubled her   
   penance. The Blessed Sacrament seemed virtually her only food. Her love for   
   it was intense. Her fasting was near miraculous; during Lent in particular,   
   she denied herself her former single piece of bread each day, to consume   
   only a few orange seeds. Her disciplines were of an almost incredible   
   severity, and her hair shirt reached from her shoulders to her wrists and   
   knees; not satisfied with its rudeness, she armed it with iron nails.   
      
   The cell of Saint Rose was a garden hut, her couch a box of broken tiles.   
   Concealed by her veil, a silver crown armed with ninety sharp points   
   encircled her head. More than once, when she shuddered at the prospect of a   
   night of torture, a voice said, "My cross was yet more painful." The demon   
   tormented her for fifteen years with insupportable temptations; but God   
   sustained His spouse against them, though she would gladly have died rather   
   than live any longer in their clutches. When a Dutch fleet prepared to   
   attack the city of Lima, Rose took her place before the tabernacle, and wept   
   because she felt unworthy to die in its defense, as she hoped she might; the   
   enemy weighed anchor soon afterwards and departed without attempting a   
   siege. All of Saint Rose's sufferings were offered for the conversion of   
   sinners, and the thought of the multitudes in hell was ever before her soul.   
   She died in 1617, at the age of thirty-one.   
      
   Reflection: Rose, pure as driven snow, was filled with deepest contrition   
   and humility, and did constant and terrible penance. Our sins are continual,   
   our repentance passing, our contrition slight, our penance nothing. How will   
   it fare with us?   
      
   Source: Little Pictorial Lives of the Saints, a compilation based on   
   Butler's Lives of the Saints and other sources by John Gilmary Shea   
   (Benziger Brothers: New York, 1894).   
      
      
   Saint Quotes:   
   Lord, increase my sufferings, and with them increase Your love in my heart.   
      
   Apart from the cross there is no other ladder by which we may get to heaven.   
   -Saint Rose of Lima   
      
   Bible Quote:   
   "If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.   
   It is better for you to enter into life maimed or crippled than with two   
   hands or two feet to be thrown into eternal fire. And if your eye causes you   
   to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter into   
   life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into fiery Gehenna"   
   (Matthew 18:8-9).   
      
      
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   A prayer to Saint Rose of Lima:   
      
   Glorious Rose of Lima, first child of America to be blessed by Holy Church   
   with Sainthood, pray that we shall always place Christ first in our hearts   
   and our lives, as thou wast so compelled.  Thy life of extraordinary   
   suffering and penance puts to shame we who live in this world of comfort,   
   hedonism and decadence.  Be thou a window of true beauty, a light of   
   heavenly virtue, to us wayward souls in these dark days of faithless and   
   vanity; that by thy intercession we shall increase in those precious virtues   
   that so marked thy humble and sacred life.   
      
   Rose of Lima, bloom of holiness so sweet, as thou didst besmirch thy body to   
   obscure the superficial markings of worldly beauty, the aura of sanctity in   
   thee didst continually increase, and the beauty of thy humble soul didst   
   magnify in the Eyes of God.  Pray that we too shall look to imitate thee   
   through thy intercession, and shun the pretensions and material wantings   
   that so mar our lives, and rule this misbegotten and often grotesque world.   
      
   Rose of Lima, sweet blossom of America, whose soul wast so pleasing to our   
   Lord, instill in us through thy intercession love of all thy virtues:   
   constancy in prayer and intention, willingness to shun the pretensions of   
   the world, humility to suffer affronts and ignominies from not only   
   strangers but friends and relatives for our faith, ascetism of the soul, and   
   a love of Christ that transcends and conquers a world ruled by vanity,   
   frivolity, and love of mammon.   
      
   Firstly, however, give unto to us we beseech thee, the sentiment thou didst   
   utter often:  "Lord, increase my sufferings, and with them increase Thy love   
   in my heart."  Pray that we shall take upon us such a yoke of mortification   
   for the love of Christ, so that someday we shall join thee in the chorus of   
   heaven, singing the praises of Jesus our Lord, Who livest and reignest with   
   the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, forever and ever.  Amen.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)