St Rose of Lima

Rose was named Isabel when she was born, but she was such a beautiful baby that her parents called her Rose and that nickname is what everyone called her for her whole life. As she grew up she became more and more beautiful and everyone noticed what a beautiful woman she was. Her mother liked to put wreaths of roses in her hair in order to show off how beautiful Rose was. This worried Rose, because she loved Jesus so much and she didn’t want people to notice her, she wanted them to pay attention to Jesus. She was worried that people might sin because of her beauty, because they would pay more attention to her than to Jesus. So she would hide thorns in the roses of her crown to remind her of Jesus’ crown of thorns and one day she rubbed pepper on her face until it became red and blistered so that people would not stare at her beauty anymore. Her parents wanted her to get married, but she wanted to live her life for Jesus. She committed herself to Jesus as a Third Order of St. Dominic, which means she lived her life devoted to God in her home. She spent her life praying for people to know Jesus and for her Bishop (who later became a Saint too) and also helped those who were sick and needed help. People say that she loved God so much that her face glowed and her eyes sparkled with His love. She suffered a lot in her life, with illness and sadness at the sin in the world. But even in her suffering God blessed her with deep faith and sometimes even gave her visions; once God spoke to her, “Rose of My Heart, be My spouse”. Rose died very young, she was only 31 years old.