Perspectives on TaizéMessage from the President of the Protestant Church in Germany, Bishop Wolfgang Huber
With all my heart I congratulate the Catholic Academy of Bavaria for deciding to award their ecumenical prize this year to the Taizé Community. There are few places in the world that enable young people, children and adults, believers, sceptics, church people or not, to experience ecumenical encounters as intense as in this little village in Burgundy. There are few places where prayer and Bible study are to be found to this extent at the centre of ecumenical life together as they are in Taizé. Taizé gives to many people the necessary spur to commit themselves anew in faith and, once they return home, to seek a community where they can celebrate and share the Christian Faith with others.
Moreover, I would like to congratulate and thank the Taizé Community, who invite with so much love and patience, in faith lived and celebrated in Jesus Christ, all those who are searching for a support and a strength – those who are seeking and those who have gone astray, the pilgrims, those who doubt or do not find rest and those who are searching for a home. …
May God bless and accompany the Community on its way and especially in the service it has rendered to ecumenism.
In communion,
Bishop Dr. Wolfgang Huber
Message from the Archbishop of Munich, Mgr Reinhard Marx
Dear Brother Alois, dear brothers of the Community, dear brothers an sisters gathered here,
I wish quite simply to congratulate Brother Alois and all the Community. We rejoice that this prize is being awarded to you, and through you to the entire Community of Taizé.
When we were students, we read with much enthusiasm “Struggle and Contemplation”. I got to know Taizé when I was in seminary. The circumstances were somewhat difficult: we were very numerous on the hill and it never stopped raining. And as many of those who have visited Taizé know, this can make for a difficult experience in the tents and the dormitories! Yet it was a memorable experience which has remained with me at each stage of my activity as a priest and as a bishop. Taizé - through prayer and its special way of putting spirituality into practise – gathers people together, especially young people, from all the denominations. And I even believe that beyond confessional limits, people of other religions let themselves be inspired by Taizé. The brothers of Taizé are also present across the world, they visit sensitive places and continue to render a service for the Church which I believe we do not appreciate enough.
This is what John XXIII felt right from the beginning, and in the same way Paul VI. All the popes have discovered that a spirit of ecumenism is being born here and one which truly lasts. An ecumenism that is truly lasting for it embraces all the generations. Many of the young people here have parents who have already been to Taizé. For such a commitment to be attained – an experience such as this that goes beyond the generations – the starting point has to be a spiritual approach whose ecumenical dimensions penetrate through prayer to the heart of faith.
It is our hope that this momentum that you contribute will also pervade the 2010 Ecumenical Kirchentag that will take place here in Munich. Sincere congratulations and may God bless you and all your Community.
Dr. Reinhard Marx