Founder of ‘Opus Dei’, a way of sanctification in daily work and fulfilment of the ordinary duties of a Christian. Canonized by Pope John Paul II on this date in 2002, in Rome [attended by about one-half million people]. (www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paulii/homilies/2002/documents)
St Bruno, priest
St Bruno, born (1035) at Cologne, Germany of noble and wealthy parents, was destined to transplant into Europe the life of the ancient solitary contemplatives of the Thebald. God led him to the execution of his designs by giving him a great love of solitude, penance, and contemplation. Of his intimate friends, six in the end shared his desire for a solitary life.
On 1084, having resigned his canonry and the chair of theology which he held at Rheims, Bruno presented himself with his friends before the Bishop of Grenoble. The latter, who had been told by God in a vision what to do, led them into the Chartreuse, a rocky desert covered most part of the year with snow and thick fog.
There, isolated from every human being (they were twenty kilometers from Grenoble), they built an oratory and little cells a short distance apart and began a life of penance, prayer, and contemplation.
Such was the origin of the Carthusian order which has since obtained a world-wide renown. After ten centuries, this order still exists where it was first founded. Bruno and his companions would possibly have remained unknown to the world were it not for a circumstance God in his Providence brought about for furtherance of his designs.
Pope Urban II, who at Rheims had been a disciple of St Bruno, summoned him to Rome to ask his advice on a certain matter. The six original members of the community followed him, and all were received by the Sovereign Pontiff in the kindest manner.
Their way of life was approved, and a large piece of ground allotted to them within the walls. There they founded a second Chartreuse, which became the mother of many others. The most famous house in Italy was ‘della Torre’ in the wilds of Calabria, to which St Bruno retired, and there died on October 6, 1101.
The Carthusian is the only ancient order that has not been reformed, a sign of a special Providence over the order. It is further explained by their mode of life differing from that of every other order in complete separation from the world, each living in his own separate cell.
They also observe a perpetual fast, silence, and abstinence; even when sick. The hair-shirt is always worn. They spend half of every day and night in the choir. Men who live like this are not likely to become lax.
Ref: Cf “Practical Meditations” by a Father of the Society of Jesus, 1964, pp 640-42
A Heart Guarded
I should like you to listen to that great saint of the Church, Augustine, acknowledging the happy experience of his heart and his clear mind: ‘You made us, Lord, for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.’
This saint, I am sure you know, looked everywhere to quench his thirst for truth and love. After many sad experiences his great and noble soul let out that cry I have just transcribed; it is a genuine confession. This brilliant and generous man was looking for happiness and peace; his search was in vain until he found everything when he found God.
All of us experience this restlessness and we need to quell it. Until he does quell this restlessness, until he fills this emptiness, a man’s heart yearns, suffers and searches. Every man’s life is the story of a pilgrim, a man making his way in search of happiness. Everyone, some consciously and others (the majority) unconsciously, is looking for God.
I would like to remind you of a very simple truth, a truth which is basic to everything we have been considering. Man’s heart, everyone’s heart, even the heart of the soul dedicated to God, has been created for happiness and not for mortification; for possession and not for renunciation.
And this need for happiness and for possession is something wonderful; it is a real need, ‘now’; it is something beautiful which expresses itself now, before we enter into Paradise. If the human heart has been created for happiness -- a happiness which begins here below, on earth, and which is to be found only in God, you have to admit that the path to it can be none other than ‘the guard of the heart’.
Ref: Salvatore Canals, “Jesus as friend”, 1981, pp25-6
The 15 Promises of Mary:
6. The soul which recommends itself to me by the recitation of the rosary, shall not perish.
7. I shall deliver from purgatory those who have been devoted to the rosary.
Ref: In Rev Joseph A Viano, SSP, “Two Months with Mary”, 1984, p73
Meditations on the Litany of Loreto
‘Mother most pure’ -- This Virgin Mother, all fair and pure, renders all her servants pure and chaste. St Ambrose writes, that when Mary was on earth her presence alone inspired all those who looked at her with a love of purity. She was called “As the lily amongst thorns, so is my love among the daughters” (Cant 2:2).
‘All other virgins’, says Denis the Carthusian, ‘were thorns either to themselves or to others; but the Blessed Virgin was so neither to herself nor to others, for she inspired all upon whom she looked with pure and holy affections’.
Frigenius, the biographer of St Thomas Aquinas, relates an ordinary saying of the saint, that ‘even the images of this chaste turtle-dove extinguish sensual desires in those who look at them with devotion’.
The Venerable John D’Avila says, ‘that many who were tempted against purity had preserved themselves chaste by devotion to our Blessed Lady’. Especially powerful is the name of Mary in conquering all temptations!
O most pure Mary, deliver me from it. Grant that in my temptations I may always have recourse to thee, and invoke thee as long as the temptation lasts.
Ref: “The Glories of Mary”. In “Documentation Service”, V:319-20
• Our Lady “de la Plebe”, in the marshes of Venice, built in the year 1480. (“Catholic Gems or Treasures of the Church” Historical Calendar; www.bethlehemobserver.com)
• Our Lady “de la Plebe”, Venice (1480). (www/divinewill.org/feastsofourlady.html); (www.iskandar.com/ourlady/ourladyfeasts.html); (maryfest.htm / www.starharbor.com/santiago/m_feasts.html); (www.miraclehunter.com/marian_apparitions/calendar/index.html)
• “Madonna della Plebe”. Venice, Italy. 1480. (www.marylinks.org/Mary-Calendar.htm)
• Our Lady of All Help. 1640. (www.marylinks.org/Mary-Calendar.htm); (www/divinewill.org/feastsofourlady.html); (www.iskandar.com/ourlady/ourladyfeasts.html); (www.miraclehunter.com/marian_apparitions/calendar/index.html)
• Our Lady of Good Remedy. (France, 1640). (www/mariedenazareth.com)
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