Today September 4

Today is the feast of St. Rose of Viterbo (1235-1252). I love this little saint, if only because I, too, in a manner "preach." A layman isn't supposed to give homilies (or sermons) . . . and especially not a female! But she did, and I do. I do anonymously, but she did bravely, walking up and down the streets of her little town of Viterbo . . . and not just on Sundays, either, but every day. And she was no queen, nor even a noblewoman. Just a peasant girl who saw a need and met it. Viterbo and environs were involved in an imperial war between Frederick II and the Pope. She told them the profoundly politically incorrect fact that they must not support the powerful Frederick II who had just taken over (and who had the law behind him). It's easy, she said: just overthrow the Ghibelline (imperial Hohenstaufen) fortress in town. Well, not easy, perhaps, but clear. And despite their "better interests," despite their pocketbooks, they started to open their hearts to this girl and listen. And, later, they did just what she said and predicted.

She could see as if from afar the imminent death of the Emperor -- and so it happened, on the 13th of September in Apulia, two weeks after she first predicted he would die. And with perhaps a tinge of the adolescent sentiment of "You'll be sorry when I'm gone!", she predicted that the convent, St. Mary of the Roses, which refused her entry for lack of a dowry: "You will not have me now, but you will when I am dead." And yes, she died shortly thereafter, at age 17 and sure enough, she was buried in the crypt of the convent of St. Mary of the Roses! When the convent later burned down, her incorrupt body was spared. It's still preserved in the Monasterio Clarisse Santa Rosa in Viterbo. Her heart was removed, it too, incorrupt, and is carried through the town on this her feast day.