#st. bruno

[roratecaeli]

Eustache Le Sueur: 'St. Bruno in Prayer' (circa 1650)

[cvbarroso]

Hodie VI octobris… Sancti Brunonis Confessoris, qui Ordinis Carthusianorum fuit Institutor.

[vigilantkilliforniakatholixxx]

[momentsbeforemass]

The externals

“Never judge a book by its…”

It’s classic. It’s cliché. And it’s still needed.

Because one of the most common things that we stumble on is appearances, on how things look from the outside. The externals.

Whether it involves people, possessions, or events for most of us it is all too easy to focus on the externals.

Sometimes, we focus on them because we assume that they tell might us something about what’s going on inside.

Usually, we focus on the externals because we’ve mistaken them for the important part.

The point that Jesus is making with His unsettling responses in today’s Gospel (all leading up to this one - “No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks back to what was left behind is fit for the Kingdom of God”) is about seeing the externals for what they really are.

Sometimes the externals can point us in the right direction. Most of the time though, they don’t.

Most of the time, they’re not the important part. Most of the time, they’re just something extra. Something that keeps changing, something that passes away.

The point that Jesus is making is that once we understand what the externals really are, we’ll let them go.

We’ll put our time and attention where it needs to be – on the only thing that matters in the end, the only thing that stands firm.

Don’t focus on the external. Focus on the Eternal.

“While the world changes, the Cross stands firm.” – St. Bruno of Cologne

Today’s Readings

[coriesu]

Dream of St. Bruno

Eustache Le Sueur—1648

[beautiful-belgium]

Philippe de Champaigne - Saint Bruno (c. 1655)

[eternal-echoes]

“No act is charitable if it is not just.”

- St. Bruno

[thepastisalreadywritten]

SAINTS OF THE DAY (May 4)

The Carthusian Martyrs of London were the monks of the London Charterhouse, the monastery of the Carthusian Order in the city of London who were put to death by the English state.

The method of execution was hanging, disembowelling while still alive, and quartering. Others were imprisoned and left to starve to death.

These 18 Carthusian monks were put to death in England under King Henry VIII between 1535-1540 for maintaining their allegiance to the Pope.

The Carthusians, founded by St. Bruno in 1054, are the strictest and most austere monastic order in the western Church.

They live an austere hermitic life, their ‘monastery’ actually being a number of hermitages built next to each other.

When Henry VIII issued his “Act of Supremacy” declaring that all who refused to take an oath recognizing him as head of the Church of England committed an act of high treason, these 18 Carthusians refused and were sentenced to death.

The first to die were the Carthusian prior of London, John Houghton, and two of his brothers, Robert Lawrence and Augustine Webster, who were hanged, drawn and quartered, on 4 May 1535.

The prior is said to have declared his fidelity to the Catholic Church and forgiven his executioners before dying.

The Carthusians were the first martyrs to die under the reign of Henry VIII.

Two more were killed on June 19 of that year. By 4 August 1540, all 18 had been tortured and killed for refusing to place their allegiance to the king before their allegiance to the Pope.

They were beatified by Pope Leo XIII on 29 December 1886.

John Houghton, Robert Lawrence, and Augustine Webster were canonized by Pope Paul VI on 25 October 1970.