St. Rose of Lima, Virgin

St. Rose was the first flower of holiness which bloomed in South America. She was born at Lima in Peru. Too feeble for the monastic life, she lived a life of severe mortification as a Tertiary of St. Dominic and died at the age of thirty years in 1617.

More rain today. It's been rather cold, wet, and dreary for the past two days now. Hopefully it will abate by Saturday, since one of the students has organized a pilgrimage for that day to the shrine at Mariazell. Hopefully the weather is beautiful in Lansing as well - best wishes to Will and Anna. Mariazell is an 8 hour walk from Gaming, at the end of which, exhausted and hopefully holier than when we began, we'll hear Mass in the shrine. Mariazell is the most important pilgrimage site in Austria as it has housed a miracle-working image of the Blessed Virgin carved in lime-tree wood since 1157. You can visit the official website of the Mariazell shrine here (in German). This is also the shrine that Pope Benedict XVI will be visiting next Saturday on the birthday of the Blessed Virgin. You can be sure that I will have lots of pictures of the place on both occasions.

Speaking of pictures, this one was taken today from the window of the living room of our flat. You can see the edge of the little plaza in front of the Spar, the grocery store in Gaming, as well as the main street that runs through Gaming and the low wet clouds hugging the top of the mountain:


This next one is the view from the back side of our flat. Again, you can see how low the clouds are on the mountains: