At the end of every year
Monday, December 14
The preparation team in every parish invites for a gathering all the families who have decided to welcome young pilgrims; this is the moment when they receive detailed information about the programme of the European Meeting. There is time to ask questions and express doubts. After one of these meetings, in Puszczykowo, a small town to the south of Poznań, several host families joined the preparation team. They take part in the discussion, bring new ideas and will be involved at the welcome centre in the parish on 29th of December, when the meeting starts.
The tasks for the welcome day are divided among all the people who are involved – some will welcome the guests at the tram station and show the way to the parish, others will prepare hot tea and cakes for them, someone will assign the guests to the small sharing groups and the young ones will guide the pilgrims to their host families. Most of the organization questions should be ready before December 19. On that day, there will be a meeting in the Jana Kantego Church, with all the parish teams and volunteers, in order to verify that everything is well planned.
But the preparation to the European Meeting is not only about logistics and good organization. The most beautiful part is to see how people give themselves to others – the families who decide to open their houses for pilgrims despite the doubts they had at the beginning; the people involved in parishes even though they have had no experience of Taizé before; the youth from Poznań helping in the preparation centre and visiting parishes around Poznań and in other corners of Poland and Europe; Taizé volunteers, Sisters of Saint Andrew, Ursuline Sisters and the Brothers of Taizé, who give us so much trust and encouragement everyday to open our hearts for others.
Tuesday, November 24
The Karola Boromeusza Parish was set up three years ago. So it is a very young community. In their preparation team they have mostly high school students who have never been in Taizé nor to a European Meeting. However, they have so much enthusiasm and eagerness, and they receive such good support from their priests that in two weeks they found almost 80 places for the pilgrims to stay. It seems as if they would be able to find twice that number. Unfortunately their church is still under construction and they have only a small chapel and a couple of rooms where they can organize the morning program for only about 100 people. They also have had a very good idea: one of the prayers will take place in a rest home located within the parish, to bring some joy and youthful company to the elderly people who live there.
Most of the university students in Poznań come from other towns of our region or even other corners of Poland. Usually for Christmas they go home and only come back to the university after the beginning of the New Year. But this year we don’t want them to miss the European Meeting, so the young volunteers from Poznań have been making visits in the universities. They show a multimedia presentation about the European Meeting, give booklets to students and invite them to come back to Poznań just after the Christmas so that they can take part in the meeting. Volunteers will also visit the student houses and take the invitation to each room. This initiative was received with enthusiasm by the university authorities.
Dear Reader, the end of November is, as far as I know, your last chance to decide and register to take part in this European Meeting. Well… exactly ten years ago my sister encouraged me to go to a similar meeting in Warsaw. I had never taken part in such a meeting of young Christians before, but I decided to try. And that was one of the best decisions of my life. The prayer, open and joyful, the people I met, everything I experienced completely changed my life! The adventure with God had started (and hopefully will last forever!) So… go to the Taizé website in your language and have a look at how you can register!
Wednesday, November 4
Brothers of Taizé, Ursuline Sisters and volunteers supported by young people from Poznań continue the visits in the parishes. For example, after Sunday Eucharist they invite people to participate in the European Meeting. One Sunday, Felicia from Germany went to Wronki, a town 60 km from Poznań. There are two parishes and also a Franciscan church with several Sunday Masses in each. One of inhabitants helped Felicia by driving her by car from one church to another, so that she could manage to announce the meeting during every service. In all, she attended 12 Eucharists during one day and one them was celebrated in the local prison!
A group of young friends of Taizé from Poznań took part in the youth meeting in Pécs in Hungary. This is what one of them, Andrzej, wrote about it: “We were welcomed very heartily. We could feel great openness and joy at our arrival. The three days in Pécs were spent in the “salami-paprika-tomato rhythm”, at least in my host family. Hungarian cuisine is marvellous! (…) The meeting ended with prayer in the cathedral where we had an opportunity to invite people to Poznań. We could also listen to the memories of the participants of a similar meeting that had taken place in Pécs 20 years ago, in 1989, which was such a special year in the history of Europe”. From Hungary, Andrzej went to Croatia and visited some high schools and youth groups. On the way back to Poland he also took part in a prayer in Berlin.
Wednesday, October 21
Each day there is prayer with the brothers of Taizé in the Church Najświętszego Zbawiciela, on Fredry Street: Monday to Friday at 5pm, Saturday at 1pm. The church is located in the very centre of Poznań, near the university, offices and a busy tram station. So many students and adults who are used to going into the church on their way home join the prayer. On Saturday, the prayer is usually followed by a small meeting - a bible introduction, a short workshop or a song practice.
For the preparation team, the busiest time of the week is at the weekend. On some Friday and Saturday evenings there are more than 20 meetings at the same time in different parishes. But there are only 10 volunteers… How do they manage to be in all those places? Great support comes from young people from Poznań, who are always ready to go to meet the parish preparation group and help with leading the prayer. They are also involved in questions of logistics: e.g. last week they contacted companies in the food industry to choose products for the meals during the European Meeting. Also more and more people come to the preparation centre to get the posters and booklets.
A group of young people from Matki Odkupiciela Parish went to the south-west part of Poland: to Kraśnik and two large university cities – Lublin and Kraków. They were visiting high schools and parishes, inviting youth to come to the December meeting. They were welcomed very warmly and the response to their invitation was very enthusiastic.
There have already been three European Meetings in Poland – twice in Wrocław and once in Warsaw. So it has become a tradition that, when the meeting is in Poland, the preparation group participates in the pilgrimage to the Sanctuary of St. Hedwig of Silesia. Last weekend, when one of the brothers and six volunteers from Taizé went to Wrocław, they remembered the very warm welcome that was given by the people of there during the previous meetings. They joined the pilgrims and walked about 30 km to Trzebnica, where the sanctuary is located.
Wednesday, October 7
Grodzisk Wielkopolski is a small town located 50 km from Poznań. To travel by train from there to the Poznań International Fair (Międzynarodowe Targi Poznańskie, MTP), where we will gather for the common prayers during the European meeting, takes more then one hour. That is too far to ensure that after a whole morning programme in the parish the young pilgrims will arrive on time for lunch and the noon prayer, so unfortunately the local community will not have the opportunity to welcome young Europeans in December. Young friends of Taizé from Poznań went to Grodzisk last Saturday and they met there a large group of youth who proposed how they can participate in the December meeting – every morning they will gather in their parish for a prayer and a very short sharing in small groups and then they will go with their priest to Poznań for a whole afternoon for the common part of the programme. Sounds good!
There are also meetings in places and organisations where the afternoon workshops could be prepared. One of the brothers, together with Michał who is studying in Poznań, has participated in a gathering of Caritas representatives from parishes of our archdiocese, to hear about how the volunteers of this organisation support the needy.
In the coming days, two delegates of Poznań youth will go to invite their colleagues from other countries to come for the December’s meeting – Ola will go to Brno, the second largest city in the Czech Republic and Maciej will meet youth of Lviv, a major city in western Ukraine.
Sunday, September 27
Since the beginning of the week, the volunteers have started visiting parishes. Two of them – Adriana from Argentina and Felicia from Germany – came to the prayer at Matki Odkupiciela Parish. Young people from this parish have been gathering in a chapel to pray with Taizé songs every week for about six years. After the prayer, we met to discuss what to do in the parish to encourage people to participate in the December meeting and the preparation for it. We decided that next Sunday the volunteers would speak about the meeting at every Eucharist and invite people to join the preparation group.
Every Thursday, in St. Adalbert Church there is a prayer with songs from Taizé. And every last Thursday of the month, there is a special intention: the unity of Christians.
The preparation is not limited to Poznań and the immediate region. Brothers and volunteers go to visit other places as well. This weekend, in Białystok (a city in the East of Poland, about 500 km from Poznań) there is a congress of Lutheran youth from the whole country. We obviously want to invite them for the meeting as well, so Felicia with two young people from Poznań, Adela and Kuba, will attend the congress. Our delegation is very ecumenical – each of them comes from a different Christian tradition: Lutheran, Catholic and Pentecostal.
Saturday, September 19
And… here we are, after the official welcoming of the preparation team in Poznań and after the first official common prayer with them, in the Franciscan Church at 4 pm. The prayer was the conclusion to a Youth Festival that we celebrated in our diocese today. Some of the young people participating in this festival joined a choir as a part of a “choir practise” workshop, others joined other workshops, e.g. about how to prepare a prayer and a place of prayer… and they decorated the church with icons, candles and orange materials.
And after a prayer – the next surprise was when young people from Mosina, a town 22km from Poznań, said that there are already people in their parish who are offering places for pilgrims who come for the Meeting. Already! Before we have actually started looking for places! They came to offer places and to say which languages they can speak, so that they can receive pilgrims who know the same languages!
Mosina is one of towns where in the recent years young friends of Taizé from Poznań have organised days with a programme similar to that in Taizé. Or rather, a day like one of the days at a European Meeting. The participants were hosted by the families of a given town and spent their time in prayer together with the young people of the parish. Perhaps, it is the result of this initiative that people there are so generously hospitable when they hear that young people want to stay in their homes.
Friday, September 18
A couple of days ago, we received information by email that the brothers needed some early morning help to unload a lorry that was bringing furniture, computers and other material for the preparation centre. However, no one was quite sure if anyone would wake up at 5:00 in the morning, to carry a lot of packages into the building, and bearing in mind the fact that some hours later we have to go to school or university. So you can imagine the happy faces of the brothers when they saw 25 “ready for everything” young people arrive at 6:00 am and completing all the work before 11:00 am!
As I mentioned in a previous post, on Friday evening there was a meeting for representatives of young people from whole region. The main topic: how to start the preparation in the parishes. We started by introducing ourselves. There were about 150 people. Brother Marek introduced sisters, brothers and volunteers. Then, Andrzej and Adam introduced some of young people from Poznań who in the first half of the year did such a good job visiting schools and parishes to tell people what is Taizé and what will happen in the end of the year. After that, we watched a film which will be shown by our volunteers to thousands of people in the coming months. The film shows our city, young people and things they do here to share with others the importance of God, prayer and trust in their daily life. Sounds really serious. But in fact the film was real fun. I’m impressed. The public was laughing loudly at certain moments. When I have a copy of it, I will try to write you more about it… and perhaps brothers will publish it also in the Internet. I will let you know for sure about it.
Thursday, September 17
This week, the preparation team arrived from Taizé. They will be with us until the European meeting at the end of December. Tomorrow, there will be a meeting for youth representatives of parishes from the whole Archdiocese of Poznań. And a day later, they will take part with the brothers, volunteers and citizens of Poznań in the first prayer of this new and final stage of the preparation.
We wanted to prepare the songs for the Saturday’s prayer, so today we met for a choir practise, an hour before the weekly prayer in the St. Adalbert church. It was a very nice surprise for us when Brother Xavier and Joaquim, a young volunteer from France, prayed with us tonight. At the end, Brother Xavier said that even if in the coming months we will be very much involved in organizational issues, the most important part, with which we should always start, is the prayer. And so, thanks to this prayer with some young people from Poznań, he felt that the preparation had really begun for him.
He also told us a story about what had happened to him the evening before. He wanted to catch a tram to go to the seminary where the brothers stay, but by mistake he took a tram that went in the opposite direction. He got out of the tram next to a building he thought was the seminary, but he quickly realised that it was not! He was sure that it must be somewhere near. So he asked a woman who was passing by one of the important questions that he had learned in Polish: “How can I get to the seminary?” In fact, it was really far from the seminary. So the woman took him to her car and drove him to the seminary. That’s the pilgrimage of trust!