MONKS AND MERMAIDS (A Benedictine Blog): TAIZE

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"Today the concept of truth is viewed with suspicion, because truth is identified with violence. Over history there have, unfortunately, been episodes when people sought to defend the truth with violence. But they are two contrasting realities. Truth cannot be imposed with means other than itself! Truth can only come with its own light. Yet, we need truth. ... Without truth we are blind in the world, we have no path to follow. The great gift of Christ was that He enabled us to see the face of God".Pope Benedict xvi, February 24th, 2012

The Church is ecumenical, catholic, God-human, ageless, and it is therefore a blasphemy—an unpardonable blasphemy against Christ and against the Holy Ghost—to turn the Church into a national institution, to narrow her down to petty, transient, time-bound aspirations and ways of doing things. Her purpose is beyond nationality, ecumenical, all-embracing: to unite all men in Christ, all without exception to nation or race or social strata. - St Justin Popovitch

Monday 17 October 2011

TAIZE - i INTRODUCTION

I first went to Taize in 1962 as a newly ordained priest and a student at Fribourg University in Switzerland. As a monk and as someone very interested in ecumenism, I was anxious to know what an ecumenical monastery was like. At that time, there were no Catholic members oif the Taize Community. The Church of the Reconciliation had not yet been built, and the community was using the village church as their place of prayer. I was asked to bless the holy water in the stoops at the entrance, because this church, built by the monks of Cluny, six kilometres away, was the Catholic church belonging to Taize, a village deserted by its inhabitants after World War II. The Bishop had lent it to them. I was given a room in the noviciate, a house in the village that had been taken over for that purpose. Every morning, I celebrated Mass at the high altar, with a monk who was a Lutheran pastor of the Hamburg or Frankfurt "Landeskirche". What Taize gave me was a vision which has never left me, a perspective in which I could discern the Holy Spirit at work in all kinds of situations, indeed in all situations in which he is not excluded, a context in which I could be attached to Catholic teaching while being all inclusive at the same time. Brother Roger held out to all the possibility of being orthodox without being sectarian, of adhering to the Truth while remaining humble in the presence of those who doubt or deny it, because Christ works in and through them and can speak through them to us: God does not have favourites and loves them as much as he loves us. We are all equally sons and daughters of God; and Christ died for all; Mass is offered for all; we must pray for all; and, above all, we must love all. Only then does our love mirror the Love of God: DOMINUS SPIRITUS EST. I have been back several times to Taize, the last time in the seventies with a couple of schoolboys from Belmont Abbey School, only a few years before going to Peru. However, I have never forgotten Taize and want to share this vision with you. Thanks to the Taize website (click), this is possible. I shall do this is in two posts. - Fr David