The Memorial of Saint Bruno
For you have heard of my way of living in time past in the Jews' religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the assembly of God and ravaged it. I advanced in the Jews' religion beyond many of my own age among my countrymen, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers. But when it was the good pleasure of God, who separated me from my mother's womb and called me through his grace, To reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I didn't immediately confer with flesh and blood, Nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia. Then I returned to Damascus.
Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Peter, and stayed with him fifteen days. But of the other apostles I saw no one except James, the Lord's brother. Now about the things which I write to you, behold, before God, I'm not lying. Then I came to the regions of Syria and Cilicia. I was still unknown by face to the assemblies of Judea which were in Christ, But they only heard, "He who once persecuted us now preaches the faith that he once tried to destroy." So they glorified God in me.
Lord, you have searched me, And you know me. You know my sitting down and my rising up. You perceive my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down, And are acquainted with all my ways.
For you formed my inmost being. You knit me together in my mother's womb. I will give thanks to you, For I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. My soul knows that very well.
I will give thanks to you, For I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. My soul knows that very well. My frame wasn't hidden from you, When I was made in secret, Woven together in the depths of the earth.
As they went on their way, he entered into a certain village, and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house. She had a sister called Mary, who also sat at Jesus ' feet and heard his word. But Martha was distracted with much serving, and she came up to him, and said, "Lord, don't you care that my sister left me to serve alone? Ask her therefore to help me."
Jesus answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, But one thing is needed. Mary has chosen the good part, which will not be taken away from her."
Saint Bruno, whose feast we celebrate today, was an eleventh-century scholar who walked away from a prestigious academic career to found the Carthusian order — monks who live in almost total solitude and silence. He matters because he heard something calling him deeper, and he actually went.
Which is exactly what these readings are circling around.
Notice how Paul's conversion story isn't really about a dramatic moment on a road — it's about what happened *after*. He went to Arabia. He spent years in quiet before returning to the world. God had known him from his mother's womb, had been forming him long before Paul understood what was being formed. The transformation wasn't instant. It needed space.
Then there's Martha and Mary. We tend to read this passage as a critique of busyness, but the tension here is subtler than that. Martha isn't wrong to serve — hospitality was sacred in that culture, an act of profound honor toward a guest. What Jesus gently names is that her serving has become anxious. She's lost the thread. She's doing the right thing, but something underneath has curdled into resentment and noise.
Mary has chosen presence. Not productivity. Not even piety in the formal sense — just *sitting with* the one who matters most.
Bruno heard that invitation and structured his entire life around it. Most of us can't do that. But we can find our Arabia — even if it's ten minutes before the house wakes up, or a quiet commute, or a deliberate pause before a difficult conversation.
The question worth carrying today: Where is the noise in our serving coming from? What would it mean to set something down — not forever, just for now — and simply be present? And what might God be forming in us that we haven't yet had the silence to notice?