St. Rose of Viterbo Feast Day Reflection by Sister Marlene Weisenbeck

 

A reading from Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians 2: 1-5

When I came to you, sisters and brothers,
I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom.
For I decided to know nothing among you
except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. . . .
My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom,
but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power,
so that your faith might rest - not on human wisdom -
but on the power of God.

We have heard the words of the chronicler of the First Life of Rose of Viterbo and we have heard the words of Scripture. I propose that we give some attention today to Rose's mother Catherine, and how she may have experienced Rose's conversion of life. We are, after all, old enough to be Rose's mother or grandmother!

The First Life of Rose reveals that Rose and her mother must have had a close and trusting relationship. It was her mother and other women of the neighborhood that kept watch with Rose when she was deathly ill at about the age of 16 or 17. Like all solicitous mothers, Catherine wanted to be sure Rose would eat. But Rose refused, saying that she wanted to keep the fast before the feast of St. John the Baptist. Instead, Rose got up and started praising God, the Blessed Virgin and Anna of the Temple who was present when Christ was brought there by His mother.

Rose threw herself naked on a cross that lay on the ground. Like Francis, in her nakedness she renounced all the possessions of the world and gave them to her mother. Do you think Rose's mother might have been embarrassed in the sight of her daughter's nakedness? Do you think Rose's mother might have felt like Pietro Bernadone, the father of Francis, when he did the same thing twenty or so years earlier in front of the bishop and the gathered people of Assisi? Do you think that Rose's mother felt somewhat helpless as Rose ordered her and Donna Sita - the head of the Tertiaries in Viterbo - to get the donkey's cord and tie it about the waist of her penitent's tunic and to shave her head?

Rose commanded her mother to gather all the women of the area so that she could tell them about her vision of the Virgin Mary and what she was being asked in this revelation. The original text tells us that Catherine was obedient to her daughter - obedient to this investiture in her home, obedient to the choice her daughter was making for a life of penance and for a more Christ-centered life.

The very next day Rose was going about the streets of Viterbo with an image of the crucified Christ. She stopped to pray at many of the churches of the city. The women followed her. And crowds of people started coming to Rose's home to see what she was doing. There must have been great anxiety in the home due to Rose's radical change of behavior, for we know that her father threatened to tie her up. Yet Rose could only liken such a threat to that of the crucified Christ. She pleaded for the blessing of her parents to follow in the footsteps of Jesus. She even promised them heavenly salvation if they would shelter her in her life of penance.

Troubles in the home did not cease. Rose in her mystical identification with Christ did strange things - like pulling at her hair, tearing her clothes, and flagellating herself before the cross of Christ. When she ran off to a church and publicly wailed before the crucifix, a man who was probably an acquaintance of the family, picked her up and carried her home - perhaps in bewilderment about Rose's behavior in public.

Rose had made a little hermit's cell in her parent's home. With an anguished kind of love, her mother nurtured her life there as Rose sought to fulfill God's action in her life. While there might have been a certain consolation in her tender care for her daughter, Catherine's heart must have plummeted when she was summoned before the city magistrate and told that Rose and the family must leave the city because the heretics were demanding it. This was an obvious attempt to rid the city of Rose's preaching which was fueling the fires of war between the emperor and the pope.

Rose's fidelity to the Gospel was lived primarily in her example of proclaiming the cross of Christ. Sometimes she used words, like Francis, to make her message known, but for the most part she preached simply by walking about and singings about the mysteries of her faith. Though her simple witness of the power of the Spirit in her life lacked erudition - a witness of presence, of walking, of singing - it was enough to earn her exile which she accepted as a mission of its own kind.

Imagine Rose's mother and father before the civil authorities! Imagine being expelled from one's home because of an unruly and pious daughter! Imagine the fright of traversing the mountains in the dead of winter which promised certain death! Imagine this walk to one's annihilation to satisfy the will of the heretics, those who gave allegiance to the emperor rather than the church.

I wonder what the bishop thought of Rose's civil disobedience - and of her tenacious and literal obedience to the Gospel. Where was he? The texts don't mention the bishop in this disturbing story.

As Rose became a contemplative and a mystic, as she fell in love with the Passion of Christ, her perception of all reality became heightened. This fact alone can explain the intensity with which she lived her short life. Her relationship with the Divine Mystery had absorbed her heart since her childhood.

The hidden center at the heart of Franciscan mysticism is the poor, suffering Christ. Literal imitation of Christ was the model given by Francis in the stigmata. Mystical union with the Crucified Christ shone itself in Rose's life as in many other Franciscans of her time. The human Jesus of the cross was a sign of hope and assurance of eternal life.

At this time of year in our local communities, we FSPAs ritualize our obedience to God, community and one another. St. Rose's feast is a good time to reflect on our obedience in light of how our Constitutions (#9) call us to accept Christ's personal call to participate in his mission to build the Kingdom, and how we commit ourselves to a constant and humble search for the will of God. Rose of Viterbo certainly took personal responsibility for her own life decisions, listening to the realities of daily life. She took decisive human action for the common good. These are qualities of obedience to which our FSPA way of life call us. Furthermore, the Franciscan Third Order Rule of Life (# 25) calls us to willingly serve and obey one another with a genuine love that comes from the heart. We can't help but believe that Rose's mother knew all about this type of mutual obedience.

If we do this, we will give radical witness to the Gospel in our own time. We will be eager to suffer with one another the price that must be paid for the public witness of a life based on the mandates of the Gospel. We will rest our faith on the power of God, as Rose's example so eloquently gives us. My sisters, let us pray for such grace.