“Oh, if only mortals knew how sublime is the grace of God, how beautiful, how noble, how precious, how many riches it contains, how many delights and joys!” (St. Rose of Lima)
These words were spoken by St. Rose of Lima, a God-loving soul, ardent in her zeal to lead people to the faith. With great fervor, she tried to win souls for God and share the love that flooded her. She was one of the saints especially united to the cross of the Lord and exclaimed: “Apart from the cross, there is no other ladder by which we can reach heaven.”
Rose wanted to atone for the sins of the Spanish conquerors and win the indigenous people for the Lord. To achieve this, she was willing to endure many penances and sufferings, moved by her love for Jesus. Pope Innocent IX went so far as to say that “probably there has not been in America a missionary who, with his preaching, has achieved more conversions than those that Rose of Lima obtained with her prayer and mortifications.”
When we come into contact with the history of souls marked particularly by the cross, our human nature tends to shudder, because suffering and death continue to be foreign to us. However, we should not be frightened by their suffering. To understand St. Rose’s soul and her spiritual journey, we must focus on her desire to proclaim the goodness of the Heavenly Father and make His glory known to humanity. This was her motivation for all that she voluntarily suffered. Furthermore, we must understand that God’s grace sustained her and enabled her to walk that path.
The message for us is that we can ask the saint to intercede for us so that we too may attain such ardent love for God and for souls. Our Heavenly Father will show us the path on which we are called to serve Him and mankind to the best of our ability.