Taizé Service

Taizé

The usual Taizé service is based upon the historic Service of the Word with some variations. Singing, silence, scripture (usually read in several languages) and prayer permeate morning, noon and evening prayers. Daily worship at Taizé includes neither communion, except for Morning Prayer, nor a sermon. It draws from more contemplative roots where silence and reflection are central to worship and mantra-like music allows the participants to center their thoughts on the adoration of God. To the average Protestant worshipper in the United States, prayer in the Taizé community with fewer words and extended periods of silence may be at once disturbing and refreshing. Icons from the Orthodox tradition are used to provide a visual meditative setting. The icons are traditional representation of events in the life of Christ and provide “windows to heaven” in the words of the Orthodox church. Incensing of the icons is a tradition of the Orthodox Church.

A worship service in Taizé

The service each month at HPUMC is an adaptation of the Taizé service. The liturgy is in English, and the service lasts approximately thirty-five to forty-five minutes. The service is held in the intimate Gothic beauty of Cox Chapel. The music used in the services of daily prayer was composed for the unique liturgical needs of the Community by the brothers in the Community and Jacques Berthier, a composer and friend of Taizé who died in 1994. With young people coming to this tiny hamlet from around the world, the worship calls for a kind of music that is accessible to these global pilgrims. Through the use of chorales, ostinatos (short, repetitive refrains), acclamations, responses and canons, worshippers with radically diverse liturgical and linguistic backgrounds are able to participate immediately. While there are vernacular versions of Taizé songs available, worshippers often sing in Latin because it is an historical language of the church, unifying the singers in the mystery of prayer. After visiting Taizé, Pope John XXII said, “Ah, Taizé – that little springtime!”

Sanctuary in Taizé

The Taizé Community has become a place of pilgrimage for young people from around the world. In July 1940 Roger Louis Schuz-Marsauche, a Reformed minister, arrived in the tiny community of Taizé in southeastern part of France, approximately one hundred miles from the Swiss border. Roger had many doubts about his faith during his seminary years at Lausanne. In response to this and to the conditions of occupied France, he cast his lot with the poor and disadvantaged. His dream was to live in community with others who would practice the essential dimensions of the Gospel in a manner that would offer a response of Christian reconciliation and hope in the face of the horrors of the war. Brother Roger, as he became known, found a place for such a community in the village of Taizé, just north of Cluny. One thousand years earlier, Cluny had been the site of one of the great medieval monastic traditions of the church. The community of Taizé would draw from this heritage but expand it to fit the needs of a conquered France in search of hope.