St Rose of Lima: Fragility and the Thirst for God

W

e will better appreciate the life of St Rose of Lima if we first take into account how people of her era understood faith and holiness. The religious imagination of the early 17th century, still shaped by medieval piety, was often marked by the struggle between body and soul. Saints like Rose were fascinated with penance and self-denial, believing that even harsh disciplines could help the soul ascend to God.

Yet saints are not born ready-made; they are shaped by their surroundings and transformed by grace. For Rose, the extraordinary virtues of her time—contempt for worldly pleasures, renunciation of marriage, radical acts of penance—were lived alongside extraordinary acts of love for the poor and a total dedication to Christ. Accounts tell us she wore a hidden crown of thorns beneath a wreath of roses, a secret way of imitating Christ’s suffering without drawing attention to herself.

At first glance, these practices may seem excessive to us today. But as Pope Francis reminds us in Dilexit Nos: “In this age of artificial intelligence, we cannot forget that poetry and love are necessary to save our humanity.” Rose’s “poetry” was her radical, symbolic language of love, a way of embodying her thirst for God.

Here, Pope Leo XIV’s words can guide us. Speaking to young people at the Jubilee of Youth Holy Mass on 3 August 2025, he said: “We are not made for a life where everything is taken for granted and static, but for an existence that is constantly renewed through the gift of self in love… We feel a deep and burning thirst that no drink in this world can satisfy. Knowing this, let us not deceive our hearts by trying to satisfy them with cheap imitations!” Rose lived this truth with intensity. From an early age she made a vow of perpetual chastity, rejecting suitors, even cutting her hair to remain unattractive, so that her heart might be wholly free for Christ.

Denied entrance to the convent by her parents, she discovered a new way of consecration—becoming a beata, a woman consecrated in the world while part of the Dominican Third Order. This allowed her to live her vocation at home, immersed in prayer and in service, until her early death at 31.

Her contemporaries were captivated by her sanctity. At her funeral, the devotion of the people erupted into near-riot, as they longed for relics of the young mystic who had lived among them. For them, she was already a saint by acclamation, years before her canonization in 1671 as the first canonized saint of the Americas.

Rose’s story reminds us of something Pope Leo XIV emphasized—quoting what Pope Francis said to young people in Lisbon—“we find ourselves facing great questions that have no simple or immediate answers, but challenge us to continue the journey, to rise above ourselves and to press beyond the here and now. [...] We are called to something higher, and we will never be able to soar unless we first take flight. We should not be alarmed, then, if we sense an inner thirst, a restless, unfulfilled longing for meaning and a future [...] We should not be lethargic, but alive!” (World Youth Day, Address to University Students, 3 August 2023).

Rose’s life was her flight—fragile, hidden, yet aflame with the desire for God. While we may not imitate her severe penances today, we can let her example awaken in us the same thirst for truth, holiness, and love. For in every age, the saints show us that Jesus Christ alone is our hope, our meaning, and our joy. Amen. Fr JM Manzano SJ