'Taizé - that little springtime.' This was how the community first set up by Brother Roger in 1940 as a place of sanctuary for refugees fleeing the Nazis has been described. It now welcomes more than 100,000 young people each year from all around the world, who come to 'grasp the mystery of faith'. Inspired by the example of his grandmother, who had done similar work in the First World War, 25-year-old Roger Louis Schütz-Marsauche cycled all the way from his Swiss homeland to the front line in France. When the work become too dangerous, he returned to Geneva where he became president of the Association of Christian Students and began to establish the pattern of meetings for young people that characterises Taizé today.
Brother Roger was born in 1915, the ninth child of Swiss Lutheran pastor Karl Ulrich Schütz and his French wife Amelie. He grew up in a loving home, the cherished youngest brother in a mainly female household. Watching his sisters work together gave him his first ideas about living in community, but it was while he was incapacitated
by I'll that he became convinced he should follow the monastic path.
He studied reformed theology at Strasbourg and Lausanne and then, with the help of three friends who became the first brothers in Taizé, began to clarify the themes that would characterise their community life.
From these simple origins something amazing emerged. Since the late 1950s thousands of young people have flocked to Taizé to take part in the thrice-daily meetings of music, prayer and silence. Meanwhile some brothers take the essence of Taizé to every continent on 'pilgrimages of trust on earth', while others live among the poor in the slums of Manila, Mexico City, Dakar, Kolkata and New York. Moving letters describing their meetings can he found on the Taizé website at www.Taizé.fr, as can samples of the distinctive chants and short daily readings from one of Brother Roger's best-loved hooks, 'Peace of Heart in all things'.
Brother Roger wrote more than 20 books, two of them with Mother Teresa of Calcutta, with whom he shared a deep compassion for the
poorest of the poor. His nine awards include the 1974 Templeton Prize, the 1988 UNESCO Prize for Peace Education and the 2003 Dignitas Humana Award.
One of Brother Roger's most significant achievements has been a remarkable rapprochement between the Protestant and Catholic churches. He said: 'I found my own Christian identity by reconciling within myself the faith of my origins with the mystery of the Catholic faith, without breaking fellowship with anyone. ' Today Taizé is an interdenominational and international community. Its 120 monks are Protestant and Catholic and come from many lands, as do their thousands of visitors.
Over the years, Taizé music, Bible readings and prayers have become ever shorter
and simpler. Brother Roger was concerned that nothing should come between
the worshipper and 'that relationship of love that the presence of the Holy Spirit offers in prayer'.
Two quotations from Peace of Heart in all Things illustrate how profound this method of communicating God's intentions can be:
'Jesus, Love of all loving, you were always in me and I was forgetting you.
You were in my heart of hearts, and I was looking for you elsewhere.
When I kept myself far from you, you were waiting for me.
And now I dare to tell you:" Christ, you are my life."'
'God of mercy, when it is hard for us to trust in you, why should we worry?
Being in your presence in a peaceful silence is already praying.
And you understand all that we are. Even a sigh can be a prayer.'
So how can it be that this man of peace was murdered so brutally in his own
church on 16 August 2005? The event sent shock waves around the world.
One brother said: 'He was not killed for a cause that he was defending.
He was killed because of what he was.' As Brother Roger himself said:
'So it becomes clear that faith - trusting in God - is a very simple
reality, so simple that everyone could receive it. It is like surging upwards
again and again, a thousand times, throughout our life, and until our very last breath.'
Venetia Horton
1 Books, CDs and DVDs are available from Decani Music Oak House, 70 High Street, Brandon, Suffolk IP27 OAU, UK (Tel 01842 819830), or from Redemptorist Publications, Alphonsus House, Chawton, Hampshire GU3 3HQ, UK.
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