FROM QUEEN TO PRINCESS: FROM Mother MARY TO ROSA de LIMA

by: Fr. Bernard Mardiatmadja SJ.

We have come to a phase, where we prepare ourselves to communicate the spirit, the process and the implications of the General Chapter of the FIC 2018 to our friends in and around the Congregation; because a General Chapter is the embodiment of the whole Congregation. Oin the General Chapter, there have been very rich conversations, with various depths of the intensity of the conversations. In the evenings, we have integrated the daily conversations in the Eucharists, including the Feasts, that we celebrate accordingly.

The main Feast in the course of this General Chapter was the Feast of Mary as Queen. Why is this Feast important for us? Because we are aware, that Mary is the inspiration and Patron-Saint of the FIC Congregation. Under her protection, we try to follow our Founders, to be the Witnesses of God, whom we believe still working to save the people, especially the poor and the most needy. We are not the ones, who possess the whole field of the Lord; it belongs to Him. We are invited, to commit ourselves and to be included in the Works of the Lord: here in a special way among those, who need to be helped in wholly improving their human condition. We learn and experience this vocation, in our journey to God in the Congregation. We have the vision, that one day, very concretely, all the disciples of Christ will become one family, helping one another, loving one another and giving hope to one another, in our human life and as Children of God. As mission, with every possible ways, we help the weak so that they become strong, the stupid so that they become more intelligent, the dependent so that they become more responsible for their own lives and the others in various intensities. We learn this from our friends also in the whole universal Church. One of those, is St. Rosa de Lima.

Today we celebrates Saint Rosa de Lima, a Saint for the whole Latin America. Her original Peruvian name is Isabel de Flores. She is the patrones of embroiders, gardeners and florists. She is also recognized as a symbol of piety, primarily because she was ridiculed for her pious leanings in life. She is also a symbol for those who suffer from familial problems as well. In her lifetime, Rosa battled with her wealthy family over the prospect of her marriage; she wished to keep a spiritual life. She eventually pledged a vow of virginity. Rose became a strict Dominican of the Third Order, which is one of four major orders of the Roman Catholic Church, originally founded by St. Dominic de Guzman.

After becoming a part of the Order, Rosa was said to have lived in a hut in her family’s garden. There, she gave up meat (a serious dietary restriction then), wore a crown of thorns, fasted and slept on a bed of broken glass. It is said that only in the final three years of her life did she leave seclusion. She went out of the house of the family, to be able to invite many young persons, to approach the poor and to help them to be able to make themselves, to have better lives.

St. Rosa has invited “all creation” to praise the Lord, in her proclamation of faith: it is truly an early voice in relation with the letter “Laudato Si” of our present Pope. In 1986 the Pope has made it an important point in the celebration to remember Saint Rosa. She wanted to raise the attention of the people to love the whole creation.

It was a very hard mission in Lima, Peru. Rose was said to have predicted her own death, at the age of 31. In 1668, the patron saint was beatified by Pope Clement IX and made a patron of Lima. She was canonized and years later made the patron saint of South America, the West Indies and the Philippines, because of her effort to help the poor and the most needy. From our point of view, she is the embodiment of the love for the poor and needies, the virtue of our Founders, that we want to experience, to live and to work as well as possible. She has worked under the protection of Mother Mary and as a Child of Mary, because she has seen, how Mary has tried to help the needy,  to come to Jesus and get help.

If nowadays we call Mary our Queen, and Saint Rose of Lima was one of the modern Saints with heart and life that has done and lived according to the Spirit of Mary, let us call Saint her the Princess of our Love to the poor and the most needies, just as the disciples of Jesus Christ.

Let us pray, that we can be the witnesses of Jesus’s love to the poor and the most needies, as sign of our Love to the Father and inspired by the Holy Spirit: with a very deep faith, because of our experiences in following Jesus Christ and in order that we can be truly disciples of Christ, to evangelize and to be the witnesses of his mission.