Gérard Groote
1340-1384 14th century
Ordering one's life not by a solemn vow, but by a resolution taken up again each day.
Who was Gérard Groote?
A rich and brilliant cleric of Deventer, he led the life of a worldly scholar until an illness, around the age of thirty-four, settled the matter: he got rid of his books of divination, spent three years with the Carthusians, then came back to preach in Dutch in the towns of the Low Countries. He gave his house to women with no means, gathered copyists who lived by their work without taking vows, and died of the plague while nursing a friend. Out of that small movement came the Brethren of the Common Life.
In their own words
I intend to order my life to the glory, the honour and the service of God, and to the salvation of my soul.