This image originated in Peru, and she was the first saint in the Americas to be canonised by the Catholic Church. In the following article you can read a little more about this beautiful image and everything you need to know about the miracles of Saint Rose of Lima.
The devotion and dedication of the followers of Saint Rose of Lima has taken her to almost every corner of Peru, and she is as venerated by her people as the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico, a loving and compassionate woman who died of tuberculosis at the young age of thirty-one, She was canonised shortly after her death because of the important and arduous work she carried out through the Word of the Lord in the villages near her residence, so that today we know of many temples where her veneration is customary, several of which bear her name. Miracles of Saint Rose of Lima.
Curious facts about Saint Rose of Lima that you should know:
History of Saint Rose of Lima
Her birth name was Isabel Flores de Oliva, daughter of Gaspar Flores, a famous Spanish politician of the time, who came to Peru from Spain and even became governor of Peru. The fourth of nine children, she was a very pious child from an early age and began to do penance and fast in secret. She immediately received the blessing of the parish priest and began her Confirmation to begin a devout and faithful religious life. The miracle of Saint Rose of Lima.
When Elizabeth was given the name of Rose, she was not very happy and kept it to herself for years, until she was able to confess that she did not like her name.
Then she received the answer that she should pretend that Jesus Christ was recreated in the roses, and it was then that she could accept her name and asked to be called Rosa de Santa Maria, she confirmed long after that the very Virgin of Mercy and the Child God confirmed her name.
She began a life full of religiosity and devotion to God, she served in the city for a long time, shortly after she had to return to her family because times were difficult and she was the pillar and support that could keep their home, she worked in the orchards and helped with embroidery to earn some money.
Although she was a very beautiful woman and had many suitors, because of her virtues and values as a religious woman, pious and devoted to her ideals and feelings, Rosa de Santa Maria felt dissatisfied when a man admired her for her physical beauty.
She also felt that she alone belonged to God, body and soul, and that she was not worthy to be seen as just another woman, but as a faithful servant of the Word. The miracle of Saint Rose of Lima.
There is an anecdote that she was tired of being insulted for her beauty and when a man on the street made a comment about her beauty, she was very upset and went straight to where she lived and decided to cut her hair and throw pepper in her face so that no one would see her and oppose others.
It is also true that Rosa de Santa Maria rejected anyone who proposed marriage to her, always going against the grain of what others thought or said, preferring instead to spend hours studying and learning about the Blessed Sacrament.
She spent several years educating herself in religious matters and studying her duties daily. Her main aim was to become a nun, but her father never agreed with his daughter’s decision and opposed it, forbidding her to become a nun.
Ten years later, she took the vows of virginity, and because of her father’s opposition to her becoming a nun, Rosa de Santa Maria decided to enter the Third Order of St. Dominic, becoming a figure similar to St. Catherine of Siena.
At that time, together with her brother, who had always supported her in her decision since childhood, she built a hermitage next to the garden of her house, from where she protected the indigenous, black and sick people who came to her for help.
Among the activities she carried out as a human being, she only allowed herself to rest for two hours a day in order to be always available for others, and it is said that she wore a silver crown of thorns like that of Jesus Christ. She turned one of the rooms in her house into a hospital room for the sick, where no distinction was ever made according to race or social status. The miracles of Saint Rose of Lima.
Death of Rosa de Santa Maria
In the last year of her life, she was mystically betrothed to Jesus Christ before the image of Our Lady of the Rosary in the Basilica of the same name.
At the age of 31, she was suffering from tuberculosis and had to take refuge in the house of Gonzalo de la Maza, a friend of the family and a prominent figure in the city.
There she received the care she needed to bear her illness with dignity until the end, on 24 August. The miracle of Saint Rose of Lima.
There was so much euphoria about Rosa de Santa Maria, about her devotion to the people and her help to the sick and the blacks, that on the day of her burial people flocked to her body in search of something of the precious woman who had served the faithful for so long.
She was proclaimed a saint and it was decided to take her remains to the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary in Lima.
You can listen to the story of Saint Rose of Lima in the video below:
The canonisation of Saint Rose of Lima
The day of the burial of Rosa de Santa María was a very emotional one for the inhabitants of the city, because even before her death, in the last days of her life, the people who followed and adored her went to the place where the Virgin was to worship her and thank her for her service in life.
On the day of the wake in the house where she lived, the crowds that gathered to say their last farewell to the saint were uncontrollable.
Her faithful friend, De la Maza, also requested that her face be painted before her death, a portrait that became the first record of the face of Saint Rose of Lima.
It took the strength of the viceroy to help those in charge to protect Rosa’s body so that no one would harm her or take her things.
A few days after her death, a large group of people gathered around the crypt where the Saint was buried to recount all the testimonies that had happened in their lives through the Lord’s work and grace, according to the will of Rosa de Santa Maria.
A request was then made to Rome for the body of the woman to be beatified, and in 1671 she was canonised and registered as the first patron saint of the New World: America. Her first name was the same as that given to her during her lifetime, but was later changed to Santa Rosa de Lima to make it warmer and more welcoming to the Peruvian people. The miracles of Saint Rose of Lima.
A brief look at the life of Saint Rose of Lima:
The miracles of Saint Rose of Lima
There are millions of miracles of St. Rose of Lima that have touched many people around the world:
In her work as a helper and faithful servant of the Lord, Rosa de Santa Maria performed miracles with the help of the image of the Child Jesus, whom she called the Little Doctor.
One of the testimonies tells how Rosa de Santa Maria miraculously cured a child suffering from tuberculosis, who was still alive at the time.
The story begins one morning in the month of June, when a woman got up and prepared to do her chores at home, the woman who was always so kind to wake up and get her little son ready to help her work in the garden of her house.
She always expected to find that tender smile that woke her up with her son, but it was not there that morning.
Maria went to the room where her son was resting and noticed that he looked very worried, his eyes were tired and he was shivering with cold, the mother quickly approached and touched her son and noticed that he was burning with fever, he could not breathe well and it was becoming increasingly difficult for him to inhale air.
The woman, with tears in her eyes, thought that her son might be suffering from tuberculosis or some other terrible disease that came to her mind, she quickly tried to bring down her little boy’s fever, but with each attempt she gave up more and more, she spent a long time huddled next to her little boy, thinking that this might be the last time she would see him alive. The miracle of Saint Rose of Lima.
After three days of worrying, the mother decided to go to the wayside shrine where Rosa de Santa Maria was helping a black man who was fleeing from the people who were mistreating him.
The man, seeing the worried and frightened face of the mother, decided to give up his moment to the woman so that she could receive help from Rosa de Santa Maria.
She sweetly told her not to worry, that everything was possible in God’s hands, that there was no such thing as a lost cause, and that it might not be the terrible disease of tuberculosis.
They approached the place where the woman lived and entered the room where the little boy was; there the saint could see that the child was suffering from a severe case of flu and that he was very congested. The sweet woman gently approached the little boy and took out the image of the Divine Doctor Child.
She began to caress the little boy’s forehead and prayed to the Divine Child, while the mother’s eyes welled up with tears at the beauty that radiated from the woman every second of the prayer.
For three days in a row, the Rose of Santa Maria went to the little boy’s house to pray to him with the image of the Divine Doctor Child, while his mother calmly caressed his forehead with wet compresses to calm his fever.
Several medals of the Blessed Virgin Mary were placed on his chest to protect him.
A week later, when Our Lady was resting in her chapel during one of her hours of silence, the woman came to her door with the little boy in her arms, who had miraculously recovered from the image that had almost cost him his life.
In her hands the little boy was carrying fruit from his mother’s garden and roses to thank the Blessed Mother of Lima, who gladly accepted them and made them part of her own garden next to her wayside shrine.
This is one of the miracles of Santa Rosa de Lima, well known among the inhabitants of the village where the hermitage of Santa Rosa de Lima is located. Miracles of Santa Rosa de Lima.
In the following video you can listen to a prayer to Santa Rosa de Lima:
The miracle of Saint Rose of Lima in history
The vicious pirate Joris Spilbergen was one of the first Dutch corsairs to threaten the Viceroyalty of Peru, and he had already sailed through several Peruvian territories in search of destruction and plunder.
Curiously, the pirate never reached the sanctuary where the Virgin preached the Word, and according to the pirate himself, his intention was to finish the place and desecrate the image of the altar in the Sacrament of Santo Domingo. The miracle of Saint Rose of Lima
The story goes that the Virgin rushed to the Blessed Sacrament of Santo Domingo to protect the altar from the pirates; the woman was willing to cover herself with her body at any cost, even her own life, to defend body and soul the divine image of the altar that was in the Blessed Sacrament of Santo Domingo.
Strangely, the wicked and merciless man never reached the place, as he took other directions and his destiny became different, which is why the miracle of protecting the Blessed Sacrament of Saint Dominic is attributed to the Rose of Saint Mary.
However, according to the records of the time, the real reason why the pirate never reached the shores of Lima was that as soon as his ships approached the coast they were bombarded by the Peruvian defenders, which prompted him to take another route to Acapulco.
Another of the traditional testimonies of the miracles that occurred through the work and grace of Saint Rose of Lima is that the first roses of Lima were sown in the garden next to the hermitage where she used to go, built by her own hands and those of her brother, who always supported her during her years of faithful and devoted service to the Almighty.
The people who came to her hermitage flooded with sins and sorrows wept over the Roses sown in the garden of the hermitage of Saint Rose of Lima, she very sweetly liked to say that they were the tears of healing that fell on the fruits of her garden and made of it a beautiful Rosebush full of colours. Miracles of Saint Rose of Lima
The miracles of Saint Rose of Lima: the mosquitoes
In the garden of Saint Rose of Lima, there were several small puddles in which many mosquitoes fluttered, causing great discomfort and inconvenience to the members of the family. The day Santa Rosa decided to build her hermitage for prayers and offerings, she asked the mosquitoes not to bother her and her family. In return, she promised never to bother them again.
From that moment on, the mosquitoes lived in peace and respected Rosa’s prayers. Another anecdote about the miracles of Saint Rose of Lima tells of the day when Blessed Frasquita Montoya did not want the company of mosquitoes in the hermitage because they bothered her and were unpleasant, she would not enter and even killed one on her arm.
When the Blessed Mother prayed and asked the mosquitoes to bite her, three were one in the name of the Father, two for the Son and the Holy Spirit.
There was another little member of Santa Rosa de Lima’s family, a little rooster that everyone loved and respected. The day came when the bird fell ill and Rosa’s mother suggested that she kill it to cook it. The miracle of Saint Rose of Lima
The frightened and desperate woman, hearing her mother’s proposal, went to where the rooster was and told it to get up and crow loudly to save its life. The bird immediately jumped up, ran away, stood up, screamed and chirped and said Quiquiriqui, flapped its wings very loudly and fluttered around the house. Rosa’s mother was amazed and burst out laughing at the miracle her daughter had performed on the little rooster. The miracle of Saint Rose of Lima
The story of the mosquitoes of Saint Rose of Lima:
Wonders of Santa Rosa de Lima in Peru
The vicious pirate Joris Spilbergen was one of the first Dutch corsairs to threaten the Viceroyalty of Peru, and he had already sailed through several Peruvian territories in search of destruction and plunder.
Curiously, the pirate never reached the sanctuary where the Virgin preached the word, and according to the pirate himself, his intention was to finish the place and desecrate the image of the altar in the Sacrament of Santo Domingo. The miracle of Saint Rose of Lima
The story goes that the Virgin quickly ran to the Blessed Sacrament of Saint Dominic to protect the altar from the pirates, the woman was ready to cover with her body at any cost, even her own life, to defend body and soul the divine image of the altar that was in the Blessed Sacrament of Saint Dominic.
Curiously, the evil and merciless man never reached the place, as he went in another direction and the destiny became different, which is why the miracle of protecting the Blessed Sacrament of Santo Domingo is attributed to the Rose of Santa Maria.
Although the records of the time say that the real reason why the pirate never reached the shores of Lima was that as soon as his ships approached the coast they were bombarded by the Peruvian defenders, which motivated him to take another route to Acapulco.
Another of the traditional testimonies of the miracles that occurred through the work and grace of Saint Rose of Lima is that the first roses of Lima were sown in the garden next to the hermitage where she used to go.
It was built by her own hands and those of her brother, who always supported her during her years of faithful and devoted service to the Almighty.
People who came to her wayside shrine, overwhelmed with sins and sorrows, wept over the roses planted in the garden of the wayside shrine of Saint Rose of Lima.
She loved to say that these were the tears of healing that fell on the fruits of her garden, transforming it into a beautiful rose bush full of colour. Miracles of Saint Rose of Lima
Virtues of Saint Rose of Lima
The personality of this beautiful woman was always an outstanding character for the rest of the people, among the traits of her personality we find
- Responsibility towards others and her duty to protect the holy temple and the Word of the Lord.
- The total dedication and renunciation of her life to serve the Lord.
- The need to become a disciplined woman in order to fulfil her purpose.
- The strength and determination to help those rejected by society and the sick, who are still our brothers and sisters in heart and deserve equal treatment.
- The patience with people who disagreed with his beliefs.
- The strength of will to stand up in the face of adversity that could make him faint in his duties.
- The boundless and unconditional love for animals, which he protected without question, ensuring their health and well-being.
- The humility of his heart in welcoming others to his hermitage.
- The simplicity and honesty of his values, which made the life of others a life of serenity and tranquillity.
The devotion and commitment of the followers of Saint Rose of Lima have taken her to almost every corner of Peru, where she is as venerated as the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico, a loving and compassionate woman who died of tuberculosis at the young age of thirty-one.
She was canonised shortly after her death because of the important and arduous work she carried out through the Word of the Lord in the villages near her residence, so that today we know of many temples where her veneration is customary, several of which bear her name. The miracles of Saint Rose of Lima.
In the following video you will find the complete documentation of the life and work of Saint Rose of Lima:
