Feb 27 Bl John of Gorze d. 975

Jack and Thom,
Good Morning, I love you
110213, 1227

The last February saint for saints and sons; a 27th saint.


February 27

Bl John of Gorze b. ~ 900 d. 975

From Angels and Saints we get that John of Gorze was born into a wealthy French family at Vandieres. Y’all weren’t born into wealth, but the resources given to you growing up certainly put you in the top 5% of family income. Money as a motive, even in business, is the wrong starting point. I’m not sure if it helps or not. I felt more free without a lot of money: without a lot of stuff. Jesus told the rich guy it is as hard as getting through the eye of a needle with a camel for a rich person to make it to heaven. John of Gorze seems to have risen above his rich beginnings.

John of Gorze renounced his wealth. Generically, we are admonished to renounce anything that we believe – through proper discernment of a properly formed conscience [would that proper weren’t a necessary redundancy] – interferes with our pursuit of heaven, of fulfilling God’s will.

John of Gorze made a pilgrimage to Rome. When seeking your vocation, where do you go to discern? A pilgrimage to your parish church? A chapel? A grotto? Notre Dame? How do you put yourself sufficiently in the presence of God to hear His will for you?

John of Gorze became a Benedictine monk at Gorze. In 960, John of Gorze was elected abbot of Gorze.

More information. This from Wikipedia entry via Google page. [Given the source, take the information with the proper grain of salt. Look at the cited references for yourself.

Saint John of Gorze (Jean de Gorze, John of Lorraine) (ca. 900—March 7, 974) was a Lorraine-born monk, diplomat, administrator, and monastic reformer.

John of Gorze was born at Vandières near Pont-à-Mousson to parents who were wealthy and well-known in the area. His father had married late in his life to a woman much younger than he. They had three children together. John's parents were able to provide for his education, and he studied at the Benedictine monastery of Saint-Mihiel in Metz.

At the age of twenty, he had already formed relationships with powerful figures of the region, including Count Ricuin of Verdun, and Dado, bishop of Verdun.

He became a Benedictine monk at the Gorze Abbey in 933 after renouncing his wealth as an administrator of landed estates and making a pilgrimage to Rome and Monte Cassino.

Having found no monastery with a strict enough discipline, John had formed relationships with like-minded men, such as Einald, formerly archdeacon of Toul. In 933, Bishop Adelbero of Metz (929-962) had asked John and Einald to restore and reform the decayed monastery of Gorze. Einald became abbot and John became his principal assistant. The number of monks at Gorze increased, and the Gorze reform movement spread to other monasteries.

He is reputed to have had a photographic memory, and also developed a bookkeeping system and capital investment policies (Dennis K. McDaniel, John of Gorze: A Figure in Tenth-Century Management).

It was claimed that the murmur of his lips reading the Psalms resembled the buzzing of a bee.[1]

In 953, he was sent as ambassador for Emperor Otto II to the Caliph Abd-ar-Rahman III of Córdoba for two years. The purpose of this mission was to stop the attacks made by Andalusian adventurers from their base at Fraxinet. John of Gorze arrived in 953-954 with his companions at Córdoba with a letter from Otto as well as valuable gifts.

The caliph's ambassador, Hasdai ibn Shaprut, met with this emissary. The caliph, fearing that the letter of the German emperor might contain matter derogatory to Islam, commissioned Hasdai to open the negotiations with the envoys. Hasdai, who soon perceived that the letter could not be delivered to the caliph in its present form, persuaded the envoys to send for another letter which should contain no objectionable matter. ("Vita Johannis Gorziensis," ch. cxxi., in G. H. Pertz, Monumenta Germaniæ, iv. 371). An English translation of his account is published as ‘Niceties of diplomacy (953-56)', in Christians and Moors in Spain, trans. and ed. Colin Smith, Warminster, 1988, vol. I, pp. 62-75.

John, who contacted local Mozarabs, met Bishop Recemundus, who was acquainted with Islamic learning. When John returned to Lorraine, he brought with him manuscripts from Spain that made that duchy a center for the diffusion of Muslim learning and science.[2]

He became abbot of Gorze in 960 upon the death of Einald of Toul. He died of natural causes.
His feast day is February 27. John (Jean), abbot of St. Arnulph (Saint-Arnoul) at Metz, wrote a life of Gorze.

Sources
• Jean, Abbot of Saint-Arnoul, La vie de Jean, abbé de Gorze. Présentée et traduite par Michel Parisse (Paris, Picard, 1999).


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