Rose in bloom.

IF MOTHER TERESA TOLD YOU TO DO SOMETHING, would you do it?

On the last birthday of her life, more than six years ago, Mother Teresa sent a message to Danielle Rose, accompanied by a rose made of frosting from her cake. "Give this rose to Danielle," she said, "to the girl who embraced the poorest of the poor and understood them. Tell her to be like this rose, to be pure and beautiful like each petal. Tell her nothing will ever go wrong in her life." Mother Teresa sent the message through a fellow Missionary of Charity who was the director of the orphanage in Delhi, India where Rose had worked that summer.

At the orphanage, one of the jobs for Rose was to simply hold the babies, cuddle them, and give them love. She sang to the little ones, songs she had written, lullabies, simple songs like "Yes, Jesus Loves Me." Sometimes she just hummed the tune. Although she desperately wanted to meet Mother Teresa, that wish never came true. But somehow Mother Teresa knew of the 17-year-old Minnesota native.

Now at age 23, Rose reflects on the message: "I know that when she said, 'Nothing will ever go wrong,' she didn't mean that I won't have any suffering or disappointment. Certainly I've had plenty of that in my life. But she meant that if I try to be like that rose, to be a gift of love, and if I'm living God's will, then nothing can go wrong."

Rose says Mother Teresa's words confirmed her suspicions that writing and sharing music was her vocation, a gift from God she was to give back to the world. "She was saying to me, 'Be who you are.' She was asking me to use my gifts. A flower is something you give to someone without expecting anything in return, and that's how music is, too."

When Rose was only 5, she saw Itzhak Perlman play violin on Sesame Street and begged her parents for a violin of her own. By age 9, she was entering fiddling contests with her father. High school found her in a band, playing guitar, writing music, and singing in a choir. Then the trip to India, where she worked in the orphanage, a leper colony, and a home for the dying.

She returned to the U.S. with massive culture shock and found it impossible to even put words to her experience. Every time someone asked her about the trip, she cried. Then she attended a choir camp. There she wrote a song about her trip and played it in the camp talent show. After the song many other teenagers approached her, crying. "I realized then that something had taken place that was much bigger than myself," Rose says.

"Now everything I write is to give glory to God. I even have some silly songs. But on the Christian pop scene everybody thinks you have to say 'Jesus' 20 times for it to be about God. I write about God's presence manifest in all aspects of my life."

World Library Publications, religious music publishers in Chicago, recognized Rose's talent when she was in college, singing in the University of Notre Dame Folk Choir. Her first CD, Defining Beauty, has sold more than 10,000 copies. Her second project, Mysteries, a double-CD of reflections on the rosary, was released at the end of October, just after Rose returned from the beatification of Mother Teresa in Rome.

These days her schedule is jam-packed with travel dates, including directing music for liturgy at the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress in February, a gig most liturgical musicians would work a lifetime to get. She will also perform at the Chicago Festival of Faith and the National Catholic Youth Conference in Houston.

ROSE IS SOMETHING OF AN ANOMALY ON THE YOUNG ADULT Catholic scene, a mix of traditional and progressive conventions--attending daily Mass and eucharistic adoration with a shiny piercing in her nose. She prefers the label "Catholic music missionary" and executes her mission with exuberance and plenty of hugs for everyone she meets. She lives by the missive of Mother Teresa to do "small things with great love" and says it's still "no less than a miracle to me every time I find that my music has touched someone's life." USC 

DANIELLE ROSE Singer/songwriter

MY PARISH: I go to Mass wherever I am traveling, but my hometown parish is St. Mary Star of the Sea in Duluth, Minnesota.

MY FAVORITE SAINT: Mary is my superhero. Runner up: Mother Teresa.

MY PET: A yellow labrador retriever named Bosco, after Saint John Bosco, patron saint of young people.

MY PET PEEVE: An out-of-tune guitar. It actually causes me physical pain.

WHAT SUSTAINS ME DURING DIFFICULT TIMES: The connection I feel to all my friends and family through the Eucharist.

By TARA K. DIX, assistant editor of U.S. CATHOLIC.