Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia
God chose those whom the world considers absurd to shame the wise.
He singled out the weak of this world to shame the strong.
And these words St. Paul applied to himself
and those whose commission it was to preach the gospel.
And today only Mother Church applies these words to St. Rose of Viterbo,
a very young girl who died at the age of 17.
She was born at around 1235 in Viterbo.
Viterbo was part of the papal states.
And in 1240 Frederick II invaded the papal states,
decided he was going to take them from the Pope.
And she was living under that kind of regime as she grew up
and very pious and inspired by God,
given visions and many special graces.
She desired with her whole heart to consecrate herself to Christ and she did so as a girl
and eventually wanted to enter a monastery but the sisters wouldn't let her.
So she ended up living a kind of religious life at home.
But she was compelled by the grace of God and by an interior impulse
to defend the rights of the Holy Father in her hometown.
And so she began going through the streets maybe at 14 or 15 years old
and preaching against the wickedness of Frederick II
and calling the people back to fidelity to the Holy Father.
Mind you, she wasn't so much talking about the responsibility of Catholics
to believe everything that the Church teaches,
to accept the teaching of the Pope,
but she was actually defending the temporal authority of the Holy Father
and understood that it was a dishonor to his person, to his office, more importantly,
for Frederick to have done what he did and for the people of her town
to have gone along with it without saying anything.
And God from time to time raises up people like Rose of Viterbo
and
Joan of Arc because the world around them had gone cold.
Men's hearts had grown cold and those who were in positions of responsibility
had failed to do their duty.
Rose was a prophetess, you might say,
chosen by God to work signs in the midst of the people
that not only the people but their leaders would turn
back to the Lord and to an honorable way of life.
We live in a time in which we have, we can say,
we have a lot to complain about and we live in a time
which needs a prophetic voice and sometimes we have them.
Sometimes those voices though are arrogant,
criticisms of the Holy Father, and sometimes they do,
you know it's just an indulgence of our, our,
dislike and our fact that we're upset and angry and very often what we say and do when we're angry
just helps to contribute to the problem oh the thing that saint rose of viterbo did which was
far more important than the words that she spoke is that she was committed to an interior life
more important than anything else was her consecration to god god chose her because
she was humble god chose her because she loved him and she desired with all her heart to dedicate
her life to him and it wasn't easy for her to stand out in the middle of the public square
and decry the the sins of men she did it as a girl and in fact that she was threatened
some contemplated killing her the podesta of the town refused to
uh
come down on her and her family that hard so she was exiled ultimately
and and so it wasn't as though she just indulged her her talkativeness or her desire to you know
give everyone a piece of her mind she was compelled by the grace of god to do something
that was difficult and she was willing to do it because she was humble she was willing to do it
because she was completely and totally consecrated to god
so let us try to live an interior life of prayer and sacrifice and cultivate the virtue of humility
and it's in in this way that we will serve god most perfectly and sometimes god will compel us
to speak up and we should speak up in in a world that's gone crazy but we should do it in a
sacrificial way in a way that's truly uh pleasing to the lord not to simply indulging our anger or
desire to speak our mind, but asking that the Lord give us his words, asking our blessed
lady that she give us her heart, her mind, her dispositions, and her words.
This way we will do good.
This way we will be vigilant as the five bridesmaids were vigilant, and we will welcome the Lord
into our midst because he is with us always until the end of time.
If only we are faithful, we live a truly intense prayer life and are willing to give him everything
that we have and to bear witness to his name in a spirit of truth and humility.