Born on this day in Lenox, Massachusetts, humanitarian Rose Hawthorne Lathrop (1851–1926) lived her life honoring others with love, friendship, and compassion.

The youngest daughter of writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, who called her “Rosebud,” she was educated in London, Paris, and Rome, and published her first poetry collection, Along the Shore, in 1888.

After moving to New York, she became friends with poet Emma Lazarus, who was battling cancer at a time when the disease carried fear and stigma. “A fire was then lighted in my heart, where it still burns,” Rose said.

Feeling a passionate calling to serve the poor with cancer, she opened her heart. “Rose would carry them up to a fourth-floor apartment and nurse them not with medication, but with love,” remembered Cardinal John O’Connor.

After converting to Catholicism, she took the name Sister Alphonsa and founded the Dominican order now known as the Servants of Relief for Incurable Cancer. Her compassionate ministry continues, with seven homes in six states providing free hospice care to those in need.

“The only way to learn compassion is through your heart,” said spiritual theologian Matthew Fox. “You have to back up and pass through your own pain.”