Saint Romuald

St. Romuald was born in the year 952 in Ravenna, Italy. He was born into the illustrious ducal family of Onesti. He led a frivolous life until he was jolted into realization at the age of 20 when he witnessed the murder of a near relative by his father. He entered the Benedictine monastery of St. Apollinare at Classe, close to Ravenna, to atone for this crime, but the laxity of the monks there, drove him to seek out the hermit Marinus, under whose guidance he went on to live a life of extraordinary severity, first close to Venice and then in the Pyrenees. In the meantime, Romuald's father, Sergius, had taken the same path as his son, repenting of his sins and becoming a monk himself. 

In 996, Emperor Otto III had him designated Abbot of St Apollinare in Classe, but Romuald resigned the charge after three years and spent the next 30 years wandering all over northern Italy, southern France, and north-eastern Spain, everywhere reforming monasteries and establishing hermitages for serious and committed hermits. His most famous foundation, which endures to this day, is at Camaldoli, charmingly situated in a high wooded glen of the Apennines. Here, in 1012, he erected five hermit cells on the "Camaldoli" on the land which had been donated to him. Although Romuald had no intention of founding a new religious order, this was to become the mother house of the Camaldolese Order, a joint Congregation of Benedictine hermits and cenobites, which marked the revival of eremitical life in the Western Church. Each hermit in this walled monastic village had a cottage of two bare rooms, a workshop, and a small garden, in which he served God in perpetual silence and strict solitude. 

According to St Peter Damian, who wrote the founder's life, St Romuald's ideal was "to turn the entire world into a hermitage, and to make all the multitudes of people become associates of the monastic Orders." He gave the hermits of the Camaldolese Order the following instructions: "Sit in your cell as in paradise. Put the whole world behind you and forget it. Watch your thoughts like a good fisherman watching for fish. The path you must follow is in the Psalms – never leave it." Since 1086, there also existed convents of Camaldolese nuns. St. Romuald of Ravenna died in his monastic cell on June 19, 1027. Numerous miracles occurred at his tomb, and an altar was built over it in the 5th year of his death. In 1466, his body was found to be incorrupt and, since 1481, lies enshrined at Fabriano. Pope Gregory XIII canonized him in 1582.

St. Romuald, pray for us that we might recognize the transitory nature of life and fix our eyes on the eternal abode.

Jonathan Fabian Ginunggil,

Most High Servant, 

Jesus, Mary, Joseph Ministry of Love (Blessed  and Saints and the Nine Choirs of Angels)