The Royal Road of Servanthood
Our Lady and St. Rose of Lima show us how to live for God by living for others
Yesterday’s feast day, of the Queenship of Mary, and today’s, of St. Rose of Lima are distinctly related, though it does not appear to be the case.
We say Mary is Queen of Heaven and Earth for a number of reasons. She is Mother of the Son, who is King — that makes her the Queen Mother. She is also the eldest daughter of God the Father, and she is the spouse of the Holy Spirit. Mary is therefore royalty three times over, for each of the three Persons of the Trinity grants her royal status. In addition to her divinely-given royal status, Mary possesses royal status in her earthly right. She is royalty par excellence.
Nor is she a figurehead. Mary has power. Like Esther the Queen, she approaches the King on behalf of her people, pleading for mercy and for deliverance and support. Besides her work of maternal intercession for us, the liturgy tells us she is “more powerful than an army in battle array,” an army well-trained and well-supplied, eager to enter the fray. And enter the fray she does. The demons fear the invocation of her name, and the only one they fear more is Jesus. She has at her command all the legions of angels, and the Church beseeches her to “send thy holy angels, so that under Thy command and through Thy power, they may pursue the demons and combat them everywhere, suppress their boldness, and drive them back into the abyss.” No wonder the Divine Praises contain the line, “Blessed be Mary, Virgin and Mother.” No one fights for her children more than she does for hers: no one.
Rose of Lima, too, was of noble lineage. It may be annoying for us Americans to recognize royalty and nobility, but we do well to do so: the royal and noble have status and rank because of birth, and because of birth they also have responsibilities and duties that far exceed those of the non-noble, including the duty of giving good example and of maintaining the public dignity of the houses to which they belong. All the baptized are royal: we are baptized into Jesus Christ, who is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and therefore we all have a share in his royal status and his royal duties. When we look at the lives of the saints, we see examples of how to live holy and royal lives. True kings and queens are vitally concerned for the welfare of those they serve. This is our vocation, too: to defend the Faith entrusted to us as defense of the Kingdom of Heaven, and to assure that the lowliest and neediest of us are treated with the dignity that is their heritage and due simply because they are human beings.
Like Mary, Rose of Lima took a vow of lifetime celibacy. Like them, those of us who are married live ghastly within our state of life, and those of us who are not married abstain. For some this may require heroic effort, but there is no sanctity without heroism: we have to apply ourselves to the work of prayer and then to the works that arise as consequences of the prayer. Rose of Lima abstained permanently from meat, took care of the sick and poor at her own expense, produced work which she sold in order to support her family, and prayed much — much. The fruit of this life of prayer and service included intervals of ecstasy, the highest state of the contemplative life. Here we should underscore that one cannot reach those levels of prayer — whose attainment is always gift, always gift — without ardent, extended prayer, mortifications, and heroic sacrifice. If we want to climb the scale of prayer so as to enjoy that sort of communion with God already here on earth, even if just in intervals, we need only look at those three legs and determine where more is needed on our part — what is God inviting us to offer Him, so that He can more fully offer Himself to us?
My own reading this morning in the Gospel of John took me to the Baptist’s famous formula: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” This is the absolute kernel of sanctity. The phrase is so clear and its meaning and implications so obvious that I say no more.
The Principalities and Archangels offer us particular help in this quest to lower ourselves so that He increase in us. St. Michael’s Chaplet teaches that through the intercession of the Principalities, the Lord fills our souls with the spirit of true and sincere obedience. This is an obedience that is prompt and willing, rather than servile and grudging. This obedience echoes Jesus’ own, following his prayer at Gethsemane that the Father’s will be done, not his. It echoes Our Lady’s, with her Fiat. Did she really understand what the angel Gabriel meant when he told her the Holy Spirit would overshadow her? I think it likely that she did not, yet full of grace, full of faith, and full of humility, she knew that she knew enough to know that what she was being told was true, and she knew that the truth requires assent whatever its cost — an assent she offered freely and without reserve.
Through the intercession of the Archangels, the Lord grants us the gift of “perseverance in faith and good dees, in order to reach the glory of paradise.” Perseverance is required: “narrow is the gate and hard is the path that leads to eternal life,” the Lord tells us in the Sermon on the Mount, and he adds for good measure, “and those who find it are few.” It’s not enough to talk the talk. It’s not enough. We are often prone to say, “but I don’t know what is required of me,” when in fact we do, and we are choosing instead for something . . . easier, if only just a little.
Contrast that choice with those of Mary and Rose of Lima. They surely took the narrow gate and the hard path. Mary knows that the Lord has shown her favor and exalted her; she announces that “all generations will call me blessed.” But she also knew that because of her choice, hardship would be her lot in life. Because of her choice, Rose of Lima is the patroness of embroidery, gardening, people ridiculed for their faith, of resolution of family quarrels, and of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, among many other peoples.
How often we look for blessing without hardship, failing to realize that blessing comes only in the acceptance of hardship. True obedience is absolutely difficult. But it is the condition sine qua non for a life of royal service to the King of Kings, to his people, and to all the peoples he calls into his royal family. We can count on the intercession of the Principalities and Archangels to aid us in our royal duties. We can count on Our Lady and on St. Rose of Lima to help us in our service of defending the Faith and serving the poor and the sick, who are entitled to our help.
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