October 6 - Homily for Today

Bruno was born in 1030 in Cologne, Germany. He was educated in Paris and Rheims, France and ordained to the priesthood around 1055. He taught theology and one of his students later became Pope Blessed Urban II. Bruno presided over the cathedral school at Rheims from 1057 to 1075. He criticized the worldliness he saw in his fellow clergy. He opposed Manasses, Archbishop of Rheims, because of his laxity and mismanagement and he became chancellor of the archdiocese. Then following a vision he received of a secluded hermitage where he could spend his life becoming closer to God, he retired to a mountain near Chartreuse in Dauphiny in 1084 and with the help of St. Hugh of Grenoble, he founded what became the first house of the Carthusian Order. He and his brothers supported themselves as manuscript copyists.

Bruno became an assistant to Pope Urban II in 1090, and supported his efforts at reform. Retiring from public life, he and his companions built a hermitage at Torre, where, in 1095, the monastery of St. Stephen was built. Bruno combined in the religious life the eremitical and the cenobitic; his learning is apparent from his scriptural commentaries. He died in 1101 of natural causes and is buried in the Church of St. Stephen.

In the first reading today we see the life of the monk reflected as a continual search for the fuller and deeper meaning of the Word of God, and knowledge of him who is the very Word of Life.  St. Paul encourages the Philippians, all monks and us to consider as rubbish all that is not about discovering who Jesus is and how to have a full and mature relationship with him!

In the gospel passage Jesus tells those who are doing so that it will not be easy, but that the effort will be greatly rewarded – and the joy that comes from full knowledge will be beyond anything imaginable.

May we, like the monks of old, spend a great deal of time, directly and indirectly, seeking God and reveling in each and every little thing we find out about him! Let it make a big difference in the smallest details of our lives!

Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.