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Saint Bruno, priest
Optional Memorial
October 6th

GUY FRANÇOIS
Holy Family with St Bruno and St Elizabeth
Oil on canvas, 210 x 153 cm
Musée de l'Ain, Bourg-en-Bresse 

Saint Bruno was born in 1030 in Cologne, Germany. He became a priest and achieved distinction as a professor of theology at Rheims. He decided to leave the world and pursue a life of complete solitude and prayer. In 1084,he established his hermitage, Chartreuse, near Grenoble, France, where he soon established the first monastery of Carthusian monks. (This monastery is the subject of a documentary movie, "Into Great Silence", released in 2005). The motto of the Carthusians is Stat crux dum volvitur orbis, -- "The Cross is steady while the world is turning." Pope Urban II called Bruno to Rome, and later Bruno was able to establish a second Carthusian monastery in Italy. He died on October 6, 1101 at Calabria.

Collect:
O God, who called Saint Bruno to serve you in solitude,
grant, through his intercession,
that amid the changes of this world
we may constantly look to you alone.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. +Amen.

First Reading:Philippians 3:8-14
Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, based on law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith; that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brethren, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Gospel Reading: Luke 9:57-62
As they were going along the road, a man said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go." And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head." To another he said, "Follow me." But he said, "Lord, let me first go and bury my father." But he said to him, "Leave the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God." Another said, "I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home." Jesus said to him, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God."

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