Today, we are filled with joy celebrating the first saint (and patron saint) of the American Continent, Saint Rose of Lima (1585-1617). She found the "treasure" (cf. Mt 13,44) and found it because she prayed. Rose would have preferred to enter a convent: this would have been the simplest solution, given the permanent opposition of her familiar environment. But God implied that He expected her to remain with her family.

For this reason, St. Rose was linked to the Third Order of St. Dominic, taking Saint Catherine of Siena as a role model. And there, in her family home, she gave herself virginally to the Lord, working in the garden of the house and sewing. She experienced the happiness of the troth with Jesus and, thus, was able to live with joy the demands —in his case, the thorns— of family and social life. She died at 31, in 1617, at the feast of the apostle Saint Bartholomew, of which she was very devoted because he had suffered a particularly painful martyrdom.

—«If only mortals would learn how great it is to possess divine grace, how beautiful, how noble. No one would complain about his cross or about troubles that may happen to him» (St. Rose of Lima).