Perspectives on TaizéBrother Roger lived in Geneva from 1942 to 1944. That time in Geneva was a fallback position for the community, and especially for Brother Roger. Many things had already happened in Taizé between 1940 and 1942. The community’s life had been initiated, not by the number of brothers, since Brother Roger was alone, but by the purchase of the house and the first work done there. Some of Brother Roger’s activities in Taizé had been dangerous; he was encouraged to return to Geneva because for the first time his life was in danger. It was thus a period when he was forced to withdraw, but only for a time.
Brother Roger did not know for how long this would last: a year, two years, ten years…. There was no practical way to know how long the world war would continue, even though at Taizé everything was ready for the creation of a community. Confronted with such a situation anyone would have given up, whereas for Brother Roger it was the occasion for a truly creative life, on the fringe of his parents’ flat in the Rue du Puits Saint Pierre, where the first brothers joined him. For my part I stayed in a small room in that house, and Brother Roger lived there as well. Max and Pierre were still living with their families.
Brother Roger had quickly become president of the ACE, the Association of Christian Students, with which he organized every year what was called a “spring congress”. He came up with a topic for reflection and people gathered in Geneva, Lausanne or Neuchatel for symposiums which allowed us to discuss the topics he was thinking about. That’s how I got to know him. Very quickly, he spoke to me about his plans for community life and then he asked me if I wanted to join the rudimentary community.
At the same time, Brother Roger was gathering around himself, in the flat in the Rue du Puits Saint Pierre, what was called at the time “la grande communauté”. With the overflowing creative enthusiasm of Brother Roger, that community came up with several types of activity and research. I can still recall the three themes according to which all our friends who came to Rue du Puits Saint Pierre were divided up. The first theme, for the intellectuals, was called the “summa”: it was a matter of summing up all the authentic values that animated our life as Christians. The second theme of research was the “itinerant ministry”: Brother Roger had imagined that, as soon as it would be possible, people would be sent out by twos to preach the Good News in Switzerland or in France. The third theme was what we called at the time the “city of children”. I had chosen the itinerant ministry; since I was studying theology I was directly concerned with ministry. But Brother Roger said to me, “No, you will take care of the city of children!” So I had to give talks in French-speaking Switzerland to announce this project, which would be put into practice in France and which took the form of adopting the children whom Genevieve, Brother Roger’s sister, took care of when we returned to Taizé as soon as the war was over.
Alongside these three major themes that were dealt with in the symposiums of la grande communauté, Brother Roger already welcomed guests. Since he had always attempted to create contacts, we received many friends, more or less young, for evenings that began with a time of prayer, where the future liturgy of the community began to take shape. Then we all shared a meal where Brother Roger had imagined something that now seems perfectly natural: silence. Those meals in silence made news, since it was something completely new. It was not always easy; I remember one meal where one of the participants had brought a large cherry tart. Since the cherry-stones had not been removed, you can imagine the racket made by all those stones that fell on the plates during the dessert, in complete silence. Uncontrollable laughter brought an end to the silence that evening! You have to understand that eating a meal in silence was an event in those days. In the end, those evenings with all our guests were a kind of testing-ground for our future community life in Taizé.
To conclude, I would like to share a very personal memory. At the time, I was studying theology at Lausanne, and I traveled back and forth from Geneva every day, to ensure a presence at the Puits Saint Pierre. At the end of my second year of studies, there were exams. I had to revise my courses. Brother Roger was aware of this, and one day he offered to give me a hand. I was revising the course on the Church Fathers. Brother Roger’s support was extremely helpful. He asked me what I was doing, and I gave him the names of the Fathers I was studying. And he began, not the work of a tutor, but to talk to me about the Church Fathers. He had a particular affection for some of them. What was extremely impressive to me was that he spoke about them as if he had just seen them, as if they had just had long conversations. Personally I was in the midst of my readings, whereas I had before me a man for whom the Church Fathers were friends who inspired him and people that in some sense he knew personally. This was absolutely typical of Brother Roger: more than ideas, what mattered for him were personal contacts.