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Good Morning. The saints I’m drawn to live at the margins of society where the wild mystery of God has a habit of lingering. Not for them a distinguished ministry within the status quo but the courage to stand with the powerless on the edge of the world. As Dr Rowan Williams reminds us: ‘The Church is always renewed from the edges rather than the centre.’

St Rose of Lima, whose feast is today, was the first person born in the Americas to be canonized by the Catholic Church. A mystic who wrote poetry and set it to music on her guitar, she identified with the suffering Christ throughout her 31 years.

Following her birth, soon after the conquest, in 1586, she suffered physical and psychological abuse from her mother and grandmother, each of whom slapped or beat her when she answered the name the other had given her – Isabel or Rose.

Rose longed to be a nun but her family prevented her, so she practised austere penances at home and became a Dominican tertiary, always supporting the family that didn’t support her through the sale of her embroidery and home-grown flowers. She also raised medicinal herbs to cure the sick of Lima, bringing them, and the hungry of the city, to her room so she could take care of them. And, with her own Inca blood, she had a particular solidarity with another alienated group - the conquered Indians.

A passion for God – and compassion for the outcasts: the heart of a saintly life.

So today, as we remember St Rose of Lima, we pray for all those who live, disenfranchised, at society’s edge, and for all those hidden saints who bring love and compassion to them. Amen