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Saint Rose of Lima
Feastday 23rd August
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a.Why was Arima dedicated to the care of Santa Rosa de Lima
THE Spanish Missions throughout the New World were always dedicated to the care and protection of a particular Saint. The modern town of Arima was originally founded as a Capuchin Mission in 1749. In 1786, the Bicentenary of the Birth of this, the most popular Saint of the New World, Arima was re-established as the Amerindian Mission of Santa Rosa de Arima. The Dedication of the new Mission of Arima to the protection of Santa Rosa occurred on the 20th April, 1786, the actual 200th celebration of her birthday. It was a major highlight of the local Church’s celebration of her Bicentenary year. To this day, the Church of Arima bears the name Santa Rosa, and many streets, suburbs, business places and institutions in and around Arima also use this name.
b.Why was Arima
dedicated to the care of Santa Rosa de Lima
THE Spanish Missions throughout the New World were
always dedicated to the care and protection of a particular Saint. The modern
town of Arima was originally founded as a Capuchin Mission in 1749. In 1786, the
Bicentenary of the Birth of this, the most popular Saint of the New World, Arima
was re-established as the Amerindian Mission of Santa Rosa de Arima. The
Dedication of the new Mission of Arima to the protection of Santa Rosa occurred
on the 20th April, 1786, the actual 200th celebration of
her birthday. It was a major highlight of the local Church’s celebration of
her Bicentenary year. To this day, the Church of Arima bears the name Santa
Rosa, and many streets, suburbs, business places and institutions in and around
Arima also use this name.
b.Who was Santa
Rosa de Lima
Like many another saint, St. Rose of Lima had to
struggle to claim her vocation. She was born in Lima, Peru, on the 20th
April, 1586, approximately fifty years after the arrival of the Spanish. She was
of Spanish parentage although there is a traditional belief that through her
Mother’s ancestry, she was part Incan (native American). Baptised with the
name Isabel, she was called Rose on account of her extraordinary beauty. Apart
from her beauty she was also graced with a profound personal holiness. From a
young age she was besieged by suitors, thus encouraging the hopes of her parents
that a successful marriage would increase the family’s tenuous fortunes. But
Rose had a different plan. She was determined to consecrate herself to God.
Since her beauty posed an obstacle to her vocation, she deliberately disfigured
herself by rubbing her face with pepper and lime. Her negative attitude towards
marriage represented a setback to her family’s ambitions. Rose helped to
support her family by needlework and gardening. But she longed for the day when
she would live for God alone. Eventually, like her model, St. Catherine of
Siena, she was allowed to join the Third Order of St. Dominic, becoming a lay
Dominican at the age of only twenty (20). She had a strong sense of social as
well as personal sin and spent many years as a recluse, occupying a little hut
in the garden of her parents’ home where she devoted herself to constant
prayer and acts of penance and atonement for the terrible social sins of her
time. However she also engaged in works of mercy among the poor, the native
Indians and the African slaves. Rose’s life was marked by frequent illness and
periods of spiritual anguish. And yet her reputation for holiness gradually won
her the reverence of the entire city of Lima. When she died on August 24th,
1617, at the age of thirty-one, the dignitaries of Lima vied to pay her homage.
She was canonized in 1671, a mere 54 years after her death. She was the first
canonised Saint of the New World, an extraordinary occurrence as not only was
she a woman, but also part Indian. In 1670, Pope Clement X described Rose as ‘the New World’s first flower of holiness’[1]
and proclaimed her Patroness of the Americas and of the Philippines. These newly
evangelised territories of the New World were seen by Mother Church as the New
Christendom and Rose was its first and finest fruit.
c.Santa Rosa
and the Caribs
Click here for more about Santa Rosa de Lima (Courtesy Catholic Saints Online)
