Eleventh-century German-born priest who founded the Carthusians, an order of silence and solitude.
Life
Saint Bruno was born around 1030 in Cologne, Germany. For many years he was a respected teacher at the cathedral school of Reims in France, and among his students was a man who later became Pope Urban II.
He turned down high office in the Church, longing for a solitary life seeking God alone. In 1084 he and a few companions went into the mountains of the Chartreuse near Grenoble and founded a community combining hermit life with community life, the beginning of the Carthusian Order.
Later, called to Rome by his former student, now pope, he went on to found another hermitage in Calabria in southern Italy, where he died in 1101. The Church remembers him on October 6.
Spirituality
Bruno's spirituality is seeking God in silence and solitude. He chose time alone with God over worldly honor. The Carthusians he founded still uphold the Church and the world through prayer in silence.
Reflection
Amid phones and noise, it is easy to lose silence. Today, would you switch everything off for even ten minutes and simply rest quietly before God?