St. Rose of Lima: Flower of the New World
Synopsis "St. Rose of Lima: Flower of the New World"
The pages which these words introduce to the reader arc a graceful tribute from a Dominican Tertiary in the Old World to a Dominican Tertiary of the New World; they are at the same time a message from a sainted Tertiary of the New World to Tertiaries aiming at sanctity, outside the cloister and within the cloister, both in the Old World and in the New. May they help to knit together in closer bonds of greater practical faith and stronger fraternal love the members of the Third Order of St. Dominic here and there; for they arc all of the same spiritual kith and kin, and all, though separated by seas, arc of one flesh and one blood, and all speak the same English mother-tongue in which this book is written. Seas not only separate kingdoms and continents, they nnite them as well; they arc not walls of division, but links and bonds of union. St. Raymund of Pennafort defied the waves, by crossing the sea on his cappa, or cloak. We can cross seas and mountains and deserts and plains without even a miraculous cloak; We are carried on the wings of thought and love. 'Many waters cannot quench charity, neither can rivers drown it, '! nor can they be a barrier to its development and extension. English-speaking Tertiaries throughout the world are members of the same family, ruled by the same laws, helped by the same traditions, influenced by the example of the same saints, and encouraged everywhere by the same Dominican spirit. A Dominican saint is the saint, not of a country, but of the Order and of the Church; not the Saint of an age, but of all time. St. Rose, though a child of America, and a native of sunny Lima, is a Dominican and a Catholic saint. This life will aid in making her known as such on both sides of the great Atlantic Sea. We may not say that St. Rose was the first saint of the New World, for God only knows His own; but she was the first of America's children to be placed in the calendar of canonized saints the first flower gathered from that part of the great garden over which St. Dominic has been placed as the husbandman of Jesus Christ. It was In a sense appropriate that the firstfruits of sanctity in that land of young and hopeful promise should have been a child of St. Dominic, for his Order had a share in the glory of the discovery of the New \Vorld-a discovery which changed the face of the Old World, giving it a new life, a new interest, a new hope, and with that life, that interest, that hope, a renewal of power, of vigour, we might almost say of youth. It was on the eve of St. Dominic's Feast-August 3, 1492-that, in the spirit of a Crusader, Columbus set sail from the shores of Spain into, A world of waves, a sea without a shore, Trackless and vast and wild, ' in search-a hopeless search, as many said-of a continent as yet unknown. The little ship which was destined to gain a new world to Christendom no less than 9,000 miles long, with an area of more than 13,000,000 square miles, as she ploughed her way through the vast unknown sea, bore on her deck, by the side of the brave Admiral who will be famous to all time, three friars-a Dominican, a Franciscan, and a member of the Order of Mercy. When the unknown land was found, Columbus planted on its shore the flag of the Spanish monarch, and claimed it in the name of the King of Spain; the friars planted the Cross of Christ, and claimed it for the King of heaven. It was a Dominican, Bartholomew de las Casas, who sang the first High Mass ever intoned in the newly-discovered land. It was this same intrepid son of St. Dominic who, in after years, became the protector of the savage tribes against the persecutions of their cruel oppressors, four several times crossing the great Atlantic (no easy task in those days) to plead their cause before the Spanish King. Another Dominican, Dominic de Belancos, founded more than a hundred convents in America-a hundred centres of light and learning, of sanctity and love
