Oct 6 – Memorial for St. Bruno, Priest
St. Bruno (1030–1101) was educated in Paris and Rheims, France. He was ordained in 1055. He taught theology, and one of his students later became Blessed Pope Urban II. He presided over the cathedral school at Rheims from 1057 to 1075. He criticised the worldliness he saw in his fellow clergy. He opposed Manasses, Archbishop of Rheims, because of his laxity and mismanagement. He was chancellor of the Archdiocese of Rheims.
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.
He became assistant to Pope Urban in 1090, and supported his efforts at reform. Retiring from public life, he and his companions built a hermitage at Torre where the monastery of Saint Stephen was built in 1095. Bruno combined in the religious life living as a hermit and living in a community; his learning is apparent from his scriptural commentaries.
- Patron Saint Index
Gal 3:1-5
Lk 11:5-13
“If you then, who are evil, know how to give your children what is good, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
We humans tend to be selective with what we listen to. And we also happen to have selective memory. We listen and remember the parts that we like and typically those are the parts that benefit us. I have been reading that that is just how we are wired. Our brains are interesting in that they filter out things that may not be too beneficial to us, or things that we don’t particularly like.
In today’s gospel, there is this paragraph which says we can ask and we will receive, when we seek we find, when we knock the door, it will be opened to us. So most of us just remember until this part and I have always been one of them. However, if you read this paragraph in full, it seems as if God is telling us that this is particularly 100% true with regard to the Holy Spirit. Of course, I believe that if we ask for things that are in line with what God wants for us, then God will definitely give it to us; but I think the last sentence is like the fine line of a contract. And I think not many of us read the fine line.
So for today’s reading, there are really two things that are key takeaways for me. The first is God 100% guarantees that if we ask for the Holy Spirit, we will have him in our lives.
The second is I should listen to what God wants to say right until the end. Actually, in my head, I imagine coming face-to-face with God, and God telling me all these things and I get so excited then finally I go off and run without hearing the last sentence. God stands there with mouth agape thinking, ‘I don’t think she heard the last sentence.’ It’s funny how many of us may be like this.
They say that the Bible contains everything that we need to know in our faith. And I think there’s a reason that God had this written down with the last sentence. This is probably so God can tell us, ‘If you read until the end, you’ll understand what I meant.’
(Today’s OXYGEN by Stephanie Villa)
Prayer: Lord, please help me increase my faith in you.
Thanksgiving: Thank you God, for allowing us to recognize you and your miracles, even with what little faith we have.
OXYGEN 
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