During their exchange, Brother Matthew thanked Pope Francis for his ministry as Bishop of Rome and shared the deep gratitude of many Christians of different Churches for the “Together” gathering of the People of God on 30 September last year, in particular for the final blessing given by the Pope together with some twenty other Church leaders.

The European meetings in Ljubljana, at the end of December 2023, and the one being prepared in Tallinn, Estonia, for the end of December 2024, were also mentioned, as well as the invitation issued by Brother Matthew to become “pilgrims of peace” at this time of great suffering in so many parts of the world.

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□ Before arriving in Rome, Brother Matthew and two other brothers of the community participated in an ecumenical colloquium on the theme “The Feast of Creation and the Mystery of Creation” held in Assisi. During the colloquium which he spoke on the first panel entitled “Ecumenical Kairos: fertile soil for the Feast of Creation”.

□ Last Wednesday, 13 March, Brother Matthew and the community welcomed to Taizé for the day the bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, who were in Geneva for an ecumenical study trip.

□ As part of the “pilgrims of peace” initiative, young people, sisters of Saint Andrew and brothers from Taizé completed a 34 km walk from Taizé on Thursday 7 March, to symbolically mark the distance between the cities of Gaza and Rafah, with four stops along the route to pray for those who are suffering from war in various parts of the world.

• · During his stay in Rome, Brother Matthew will be hosting a number of journalists for an informal breakfast. If you would like to participate, please write as soon as possible to secretariat taize.fr.

• · If you would like to receive the press releases sent four times a year to journalists and media, please register by writing to media taize.fr.

The bishops were in Geneva for an ecumenical study trip. They attended midday prayer and shared lunch with the community. In the afternoon, they reflected with the brothers on the themes of the unity of the Church, listening and dialogue, as well as the forthcoming European meeting in Tallinn, a city which is 82 km from Helsinki, two hours by ferry.

• International meetings in Taizé throughout the year for young adults aged 18 to 35 (Other age groups, see here.)

• Holy Week and Easter in Taizé from 24 March to 7 April 2024

• Meeting of Friendship between young Muslims and Christians from 7 to 12 July 2024

• Sharing and discovering the faith of the Orthodox Churches from 4 to 11 August 2024

• Week of reflection for young adults aged 18 to 35 from 25 August to1 September 2024

• European Meeting of Young Adults from 28 December 2024 to 1 January 2025 in Tallinn, Estonia.

The meetings in Taizé are made possible thanks to a group of young volunteers: young women and men aged between 18 and 29. They are welcomed for longer periods in Taizé, from a few weeks to a year:

Together... praying

• ▪ Nothing that happens at Taizé would be possible without the three common prayers, and it is also through prayer that the volunteers help to welcome all those who come.

Together... living in community

• ▪ Together, building a small temporary community with young people from every continent, from different Churches, in the shared richness of our diversity.

Together... serving other people

• ▪ Make it possible, by being available, to welcome young people in Taizé.

If you want to know more, see Volunteering in Taizé.

The week of prayer for Christian unity will take place, as every year from January 18 to 25. All our friends from the area are invited to come to Taizé on Thursday January 18 at 6pm for a prayer service, followed by refreshments. The prayer will be broadcast live:

Before this, beginning at 5pm in room 15, there will be a meeting with Brother Matthew for those who wish.

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Welcome to all of you who have come from the region near Taizé this Christmas night when we are celebrating the nativity of Jesus. With my brothers, we are very glad to welcome you here in the Church of Reconciliation. At the end of the Eucharist, we are going to light our candles with the light that has come from Bethlehem and which is burning in this lantern. Then we will go outside and sing in front of the crib outside the church.

We have just heard the Gospel of the birth of Jesus. It’s a well-known story for many of us, but what does it have to say to us this evening? For me, it is a story that offers us some Christmas gifts. I can think of three gifts that we can receive by listening to it, gifts that God gives to each one of us. Perhaps you will recognise others as you reread the story.

The first gift is “joy”. There are the shepherds; they are not privileged people; they have to spend the night outside with their sheep. To these poor people, the angel, God’s messenger, announces “great joy”, not only for them but for all the people: good news to be shared. The shepherds will in their turn become messengers of God.

This “great joy” will also be the joy of Jesus’ friends at the end of the Gospel. It will fill their hearts after Christ’s death and resurrection. Joy can come to birth when we go through tight places. What is the joy I am receiving these days? How can I share it with others?

The second gift is called “peace”. At the sight of God’s messenger, the shepherds were seized with great fear. We can be taken aback when we realise that God is present. But the angel says: “Do not be afraid”. And then the whole sky sings of the peace that God offers to all the inhabitants of the earth, whom he loves without exception.

The peace that the shepherds receive in their hearts is to shine out around them. One of the early witnesses to Christ said: “Begin the work of peace within yourself so that, once you are at peace, you may bring peace to others”. Thinking about the violence in ourselves, in our societies and in our world, what is my responsibility for of this peace that God announces and entrusts to us?

The third gift I would call “newness”. The birth of Jesus is something completely new in the history of humanity. And the amazing thing for us, as for the shepherds, is that God chooses to meet us at the point where we are. God is no longer far away, but close to us. God is there, very weak, humble and poor in the baby Jesus, dependent on Mary, his mother, on Joseph and the others around him. And he entrusts himself to our care as well.
If something is new, it is often fragile. It needs to be welcomed, cared for and supported. And yet every new thing is part of a story. It is not by chance that Luke begins his account of the birth of Jesus by situating it among the current events of the time. What is new arises in our experience of life as it is lived, an experience in which we are invited to discern the traces of God.

What is the newness that God is asking us to welcome this Christmas night and during this Christmas season? Even if it is fragile, how can we create a space where we can nourish it and let it grow?

Let us welcome these three gifts from God: joy, peace and newness. Then we can then offer them to others too, by the way we live. Maybe this could be the challenge that Christmas presents to us all…

The Christmas Eucharist was broadcast from 8.30pm (Paris time) on the evening of Sunday 24 December.

The Taizé Community has a new prior. On Saturday 2 December, Brother Alois handed over his office to Brother Matthew in the presence of representatives of various Churches and many friends of the Community, as well as the young people in Taizé for the week.

Among the Church representatives, five were asked to say a prayer for Brother Matthew’s start as “servant of communion” in the Community: Bishop Benoît Rivière of Autun, Chalon and Mâcon, Metropolitan Maximos of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Geneva, Anglican Bishops Olivia Graham of Reading and Smitha Prasadam of Huddersfield, and Pastor Laurent Schlumberger, former President of the United Protestant Church of France. Others present included Pastor Christian Krieger, President of the French Protestant Federation, and the Lutheran Bishop of Riga, Rinalds Grants.

Photos of some key moments

Photos : Tamino Petelinsek

To obtain high resolution photos, please write to media taize.fr.

During the Sunday Eucharist, the Archbishop of Uppsala, Martin Modéus, gave a meditation on the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. His closing words were "Jesus invites us to see the world, together with him, with the eyes of life and love. On our pilgrimage we are maybe not there. But he is there, looking at us with eyes shimmering with love." (full text online here)

The relationship between Taizé and the Church of Sweden goes back many years, but it was after a youth meeting in Linköping in 1990, on the invitation of Bishop Martin Lönnebo, who passed away on April 27, 2023 whilst the bishops were in Taizé, that the number of young people visiting from Sweden grew. Large numbers of youth leaders come together with their parishes to take part on the meetings in Taizé during Easter, summer and the All Saints holidays.

The next step in the preparation of this unprecedented ecumenical event, which already involves some sixty partners from various denominational backgrounds, will take place from 12 to 15 March in Rome. In announcing the event on 15 January, Pope Francis invited "brothers and sisters of all Christian denominations to participate in this ’gathering of the people of God’" (full text hereî).

Before coming to Rome, Brother Alois visited the General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, the Reverend Jerry Pillay, and the General Secretary of the Lutheran World Federation, the Reverend Anne Burghardt, in Geneva on Monday 6 March. He was accompanied by the sixty or so young people currently volunteering in Taizé.

This Friday evening, 12 March, Brother Alois will speak in Frankfurt at the fifth and final assembly of the Synodal Way in Germany, for a meditation which will give him the opportunity to underline the spiritual dimension of the synodal process.

Press information

For more information on the "Together" gathering write to this address.
For more information on the Taizé Community write to this address.

Photo (C) Vatican Media

Eternal God, praise be to you! You call us to follow Jesus Christ. And you want us, through our life as brothers, to be a parable of that communion which Christ brought for all humanity.

We confide to you all the things we have talked about over the last few days – the kindness so essential for our common life, the co-responsibility and cooperation between us, our will to widen our friendships so as to contribute to the search for a new face of the Church. We pray that you will give us hearts that are open for these conversations to bear fruit.

We thank you for our brothers in the fraternities whose lives make the Gospel present in very diverse situations. Show us how our fraternities can evolve in a changing world and in accordance with the changes that our community is experiencing.

Teach us to listen better to the whisper of your Holy Spirit, in us and in our common life. Increase our faith in the presence and in the strength of your Spirit which always revives our vocation. Your Spirit is the spring that never dries up. Help us to draw from this spring the courageous decisions that will allow the heritage of our community to be always renewed, in our desire to achieve a common creation supported by all the brothers.

Your Holy Spirit leads us to listen more to one another. You have given us the opportunity to experience this during these days of our Council. In listening to one another you give us new insights and the courage to put them into practice.

We entrust to you all that is going to be part of our live this year in community, in the confidence that you will guide us in the future as you have done until now. Keep us in joy and in a spirit of generosity.

We entrust to you the whole Church, the project "Together – the Gathering of the People of God", the journeys of the brothers to reach out to young people on different continents, the meetings in Taizé, Ljubljana and elsewhere, as well as the pastoral initiatives that our brothers will be undertaking in the fraternities.

And we ardently entrust to you all those who bear serious wounds, the victims of war, in Ukraine and elsewhere, the victims of sexual aggression and spiritual abuse, migrants, those who suffer from climate change, the sick and all those forgotten in our societies.
God of love, in Christ you give us a living hope. Grant that we may be faithful witnesses to this.

To watch the evening prayer on video:

The death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI touches our hearts in Taizé because our community has had a relationship with him for over half a century. In fact, Joseph Ratzinger and Brother Roger already knew each other at the Second Vatican Council, where one was an expert and the other an observer.

 

I remember myself staying with Brother Roger at the home of the theologian who became Archbishop of Munich during a meeting of young people that we had prepared in that city. He received us warmly in his house.

 

Later, when Brother Roger went to Rome every year to meet Pope John Paul II, he often went to visit Cardinal Ratzinger, then prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in order to have an in-depth exchange with him.

 

The last letter written by Brother Roger three days before he was murdered was addressed to the new Pope Benedict XVI to tell him that his advanced age did not allow him to go to the WYD in Cologne, but that he would go as soon as possible to greet him in Rome. The Pope had this letter in his hands during the general audience on Wednesday when he announced with sadness the tragic death of the founder of our community. He held Brother Roger in great esteem, and five years after his death he wrote: "May his witness to an ecumenism of holiness inspire us in our march towards unity.”

 

Personally, I am very grateful for the welcome that Benedict XVI gave me when I went to meet him a few months after the beginning of my new ministry as prior of our community. The same year, 2005, saw the death of John Paul II and of Brother Roger. How would our community’s relationship with the Pope continue? From the very first audience I understood that his confidence in us had been won and that I could go to see him every year. He told me: "In Taizé, you have the songs and the silence, you go to the essential with the young people, towards a personal relationship with God.” This was very important for him and for us.

 

The relationship with him culminated in the prayer we celebrated in his presence on December 29, 2012, during our young adult European meeting in Rome. To the thousands of young people gathered in St. Peter’s Square, Benedict XVI said, among other things, "I assure you of the Catholic Church’s irrevocable commitment to continue to search for ways of reconciliation in order to achieve the visible unity of Christians."

 

A few weeks later he resigned, and I made a point of going to see him in his retirement the following year to thank him for the unfailing support he had always given to our community in its vocation.

Photo: (C) Servizio Fotografico dell’Osservatore Romano | Vatican Media