Taizé Monks to Visit Austin and Lead Service at FBC

 

First Baptist Church of Austin will host a very special Taizé service on Sunday, October 6 at 7 pm in the sanctuary at 901 Trinity in downtown Austin. All are invited.

 

Brothers Emmanuel and Emile, who belong to a world-renowned ecumenical monastery near Taizé, France, will lead the service. Their Taizé community, located in a little village in the south of France, includes monks from all continents and major denominations. They gather together three times a day, seven days a week, throughout the year to pray with or without the thousands of youth that trek from all over the world to be a part of the peace movement they represent.

Their monastery started more than 60 years ago when Brother Roger from Taizé felt a call to create a community devoted to prayer and living a parable of reconciliation within the church and the human family. His vision was to build a community which would make reconciliation between people a real, everyday occurrence, "where kindness of heart would be lived out very concretely, and where love would be at the heart of everything." 

During World War II, Brother Roger hid refugees, notably Christians and Jews, who knew they would find refuge in his house. On Easter day, 1949, he and six other brothers committed their whole life to celibacy, common life, and to a great simplicity of life.

To support the young generations who were drawn to this love, the Taizé Community began a "pilgrimage of trust on earth." Today, throughout the world, the name of Taizé evokes peace, reconciliation, communion, and the expectation of a springtime of the Church. Thousands of young people make pilgrimages to Taizé weekly and other large gatherings around the world to be a part of the international youth pilgrimage and participate in a spirituality which is contemplative and rooted in silence and the Christian monastic tradition.

The Brothers trip to Austin is to prepare for a large Taizé gathering at First Baptist Church of Austin from March 21-23 when hundreds of young people will come together to take part in meetings of silence, prayer, song, and reflection. 

 

"When the Church listens, heals, reconciles, it becomes what it is at its most luminous: the clear reflection of a love."   - Brother Roger