MEMORIAL OF SAINT BRUNO, PRIEST AND BLESSED MARIE ROSE DUROCHER, VIRGIN ~ FEAST DAY ~ OCTOBER 6TH: Today, we celebrate the Memorial of Saint Bruno, Priest and Blessed Marie Rose Durocher, Virgin. Through the intercession of our Blessed Mother Mary and the Saints on this feast day, we humbly pray for God’s Divine Grace and Mercy upon us all. We pray for the poor, the needy, and the most vulnerable. We pray for the sick and dying, especially those who are mentally and physically ill and those suffering from cancers and other terminal diseases. We pray for the souls in Purgatory and the repose of the souls of the faithful departed. We pray for all widows and widowers. We pray for peace, love, and unity in our marriages, our families, and our world. And we continue to pray for our Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV, the Bishops, the Clergy, for vocations to the priesthood and religious life, for the Church, for persecuted Christians, for the conversion of sinners, and Christians all over the world…. Amen🙏
SAINT BRUNO, PRIEST: St. Bruno of Cologne (1030-1101) was born to a noble and prominent family in Cologne, Germany in about 1030. He was the founder of the Carthusian order of monks who remain notable for their strictly traditional and austere rule of contemplative life. His mother was St. Matilda, patroness of Maude, widow of King Henry I. Excepting St. Norbert, he is the only German having that honor. His contemporaries called him the light of the Church, the flower of the clergy, the glory of Germany and France. Early in life he was a canon at Cologne and Rheims. He was well educated and excelled in his studies, and became a priest around the year 1055. Returning to Reims the following year, he soon became head of the school he had attended there, after its director Heriman left to enter consecrated religious life in 1057. He directed and taught at the episcopal school at Reims for many years, nearly two decades earning a reputation as a learned scholar and acquiring an excellent reputation as a philosopher and theologian, until he was named chancellor of the local diocese in 1075. After also serving as the chancellor of his archdiocese, he and a few companions left their positions in the diocese in order to follow a path of greater religious observance. He decided to leave the world and pursue a life of complete solitude and prayer. The persecution by the simoniacal archbishop of Rheims, Manasses, hastened his resolve to enter a life of solitude (1084). He settled in the Chartreuse Mountains in France with a small group of scholars who, like himself, desired to become contemplative monks. This was the beginning of the Carthusian order founded by St. Bruno, combining the solitary life of hermits with the conventual life of religious observance. Legend puts it this way. A famous professor had died. While the Office of the Dead was being chanted at his funeral, he suddenly raised himself up from the coffin and said: “By the just judgment of God have I been accused, judged, damned.” Thereupon Bruno renounced the world. He received from Hugo, bishop of Grenoble, a site called Chartreuse (from the color of the surrounding hills) as a place of residence.
In 1088, one of Bruno’s former students was elected as Pope Urban II. Six years into his life as an alpine monk, Bruno was called to leave his remote monastery to assist the Pope in his struggle against a rival papal claimant as well as the hostile Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV. St. Bruno served as a close adviser to the Pope during a critical period of reform. Around this time, he also rejected another chance to become a bishop, this time in the Italian region of Calabria. While he obtained the Pope’s permission to return to monastic life, Bruno was required to remain in Italy to help the Pope periodically, rather than returning to his monastery in France. During the 1090s Bruno befriended Count Roger of Sicily and Calabria, who granted land to his group of monks and enabled the founding of a major monastery in 1095. The monks were known, then as now, for their strict practice of asceticism, poverty, and prayer; and for their unique organizational form, combining the solitary life of hermits with the collective life of more conventional monks. The Order founded by Bruno is one of the strictest in the Church. These alpine monks embraced a strictly disciplined life of poverty, labor, prayer, and fasting. Carthusians follow the Rule of St. Benedict, but accord it a most austere interpretation; there is perpetual silence and complete abstinence from flesh meat (only bread, legumes, and water are taken for nourishment). Bruno sought to revive the ancient eremitical way of life. His Order enjoys the distinction of never becoming unfaithful to the spirit of its founder, never needing a reform. Six years after initiating the foundation, Bruno was called to Rome by Pope Urban II as personal counselor to assist with the troubles and controversies rocking the Church. He complied with a heavy heart. St. Bruno became a close advisor to the Pope and was allowed to return to monastic life only if he remained nearby within Italy. However, when the Pope was forced to flee to Campania because of Emperor Henry IV, St. Bruno found a wilderness similar to that of Chartreuse at La Torre; there he made a second foundation in 1095, which blossomed into a flourishing community. Here in September, 1101, he became severely ill. Having called together his followers, St. Bruno made a public confession and died on October 6, 1101, at the age of seventy-one. He’s the Patron Saint of diabolic possession; Ruthenia. Veneration of St. Bruno was given formal approval in 1514, and extended throughout the Latin Rite in 1623. More recently, his Carthusian Order was the subject of the 2006 documentary film “Into Great Silence,” chronicling the life of monks in the Grand Chartreuse monastery. His feast day is celebrated on October 6th.
QUOTES OF SAINT BRUNO
☆”By your work you show what you love and what you know.”
☆”The cross is steady while the world is turning.” “While the world changes, the cross stands firm.”
☆”For when the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through places without water, seeking rest; and not finding. . .”
☆”For the devil may tempt the good, but he cannot find rest in them; for he is shaken violently, and upset, and driven out, now by their prayers, now by their tears of repentance, and now by their almsgiving and similar good works.”
PRAYER: God, You called St. Bruno to serve You in solitude. Through his intercession, grant that amidst the many affairs of this world we may always have time for You. Amen 🙏
BLESSED MARIE ROSE DUROCHER, VIRGIN: Bl. Marie Rose (1811-1849) was born Eulalie Durocher on October 6, 1811 at St. Antoine in Quebec, Canada. She was the tenth of eleven children. She was drawn to the religious life, but turned away because of her frail health. After her education at the hands of the Sisters of Notre Dame, for 12 years she assisted her brother, a parish priest, as a housekeeper and in the process established the first Canadian parish Sodality for young women. She lived a life of great poverty and remained unswerving in her concern for the poor.
In 1843, the she was invited and encouraged by Bishop Bourget to found a new congregation of women dedicated to Christian education. Accordingly she founded the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary and took the religious name Marie Rose. Her religious order was dedicated to Christian education, especially for the poor. Under her saintly and wise leadership, her community flourished in spite of all kinds of obstacles, including great poverty and unavoidable misunderstandings. She remained unswerving in her concern for the poor. Worn out by her many labors, Marie Rose was called to her heavenly reward on October 6, 1849, at the age of 38, died of natural causes. This Order first came to the U.S. in 1859. Bl. Marie-Rose was beatified and declared Blessed on May 23, 1982 by Pope John Paul II. She’s the Patron Saint of bodily ills; loss of parents; illness; frail health.
QUOTES OF BLESSED MARIE ROSE DUROCHER
☆”Let us pray, let us suffer and let us trust”
☆”To a novice leaving religious life, Marie-Rose said: “Do not imitate those persons who, after having spent a few months as postulant or novice in a community, dress differently, even ludicrously. You are returning to the secular state. My advice is, follow the styles of the day, but from afar, as it were.”
PRAYER: O Lord, You enkindled in the heart of Blessed Marie Rose Durocher the flame of an ardent charity and a burning desire to collaborate, as a teacher, in the mission of the Church. Inspire our hearts with that same charity so that we may lead our brothers and sisters to the bliss of eternal life. Amen 🙏