Posts Tagged ‘Luke 9:57-62’
Life’s Many, Many Crosses – Br Sean Glenn
Br. Sean Glenn
Job 9:1-16
Psalm 88:10-15
Luke 9:57-62
I hope it isn’t controversial of me to say so, but this morning’s readings are, in a word, difficult. If we came to church today looking for encouragements and consolations in the scriptures, we will be hard pressed to find any.
Job’s searching journey of suffering takes him out of an awareness centered purely on the human being—it takes him into the vastness of creation, its complexity, and its awful scale and dimensions. This leaves him with a stark awareness of the sheer immensity of God and the utter smallness of the human creature. My heart breaks for him as he says, “ Though I am innocent, I cannot answer him; I must appeal for mercy to my accuser. If I summoned him and he answered me, I do not believe that he would listen to my voice.”[1]
The gospel doesn’t help much either: three times Jesus presents his listeners with councils that are, to my mind, lacking in a certain pastoral sensitivity. I will follow you! says one. Then prepare for a life with nowhere to lay your head, he replies. He tells another to follow him, who asks if they might first bury their father. Let the dead bury their own dead. Finally, to another, his remarks about the unfitness of any who look back, having put their hand to the apostolic plow. Read More
Sermon for St. Bruno – Br. David Allen
Phil. 3:7-15 / Lk. 9:57-62
The Eucharist today commemorates Saint Bruno, the Founder of the Carthusian Order, founded in 1084 A. D. In this Chapel he is depicted in the windows just above us, the last one on the North Side, nearest the Altar. Bruno was born in Cologne about 1032. He was gifted intellectually, and became rector of the Cathedral School at Rheims. After about 18 years in that position of great responsibility Bruno began to feel drawn to the monastic life. Read More
Testing – Br. David Allen
Lk 9:57-62
Jesus’ responses to those who said they would follow him that we heard in today’s Gospel have sometimes made me uncomfortable. They can seem abrupt or off-putting. We usually think of Jesus speaking to people with compassion.
As I meditated on it, I realized that there must have been reasons for such responses. Read More
Saint Bruno – Br. David Allen
Phil. 3:7-15; Lk. 9:57-62
Today we celebrate the Feast of St. Bruno, founder of the Order of Carthusian Monks. Little is known of his childhood, except that he was born in Cologne in 1032. After ordination he became the highly respected Rector of the Cathedral School at Rheims. In 1075 he was appointed Chancellor of the Diocese of Rheims. In addition to this Pope Urban II, who had been one of his students at the Cathedral school in Rheims, appointed him as his advisor. In 1084 Bruno and six of his companions began to feel the call to the monastic life. For a short time he and his companions lived with Saint Robert and a few others who eventually founded the Cistercian Order, but Bruno and his companions decided instead to found a more austere order. They settled in 1084 at Chartreuse, near Grenoble and followed an ethos inspired by the ideals of the primitive monasticism of the 3rd and 4th centuries of the desert monks in Egypt. Their ethos centered on silence, austerity and total renunciation of the world. Similar to the early desert monasteries Bruno and his companions chose to live in small hermitages within the monastery complex, and came together for prayer and on greater feasts for some of their meals, as Carthusian monks do today. Bruno died on this date in 1101. Read More