The Charism of Taizé

Part 2, Contemplation for the Masses

As I mentioned in the last post, Taizé is focused upon young people. Thousands of young people visit Taizé each year, sharing prayers, worship, and talks with the monks.

Because of this mission, the grounds and facilities of Taizé are mixture of monastery and youth camp. The countryside and village of Taizé are lovely. And on the Taizé grounds there is a lovely woods and pond.

But access to that woods and pond is only available from 2:00 to 4:30. The reason for this is obvious. If you have hundreds of teenagers on site you don't want them sneaking off into the woods at all hours of the day or night. 

Beyond controlling access to various parts of the grounds, the facilities themselves are utilitarian. The Church of Reconciliation is filled with beauty, from stained glass to icons, but the structure itself is merely functional. The true beauty of Taizé are the thrice daily worship services. The aesthetics of the liturgy is what draws you to Taizé.

Pondering this during my week at Taizé, one of the charisms of the community, in my estimation, is how they have managed to scale a contemplative retreat.

By and large, contemplative retreats tend to be small or even individual affairs. I've done retreats at monasteries, and I'm often the only visitor there, or among only a handful. Taizé, by contrast, has hundreds of people on site, sometimes thousands. And most of these people are teenagers. You'd think having a contemplative retreat with thousands of teens would be impossible. But Taizé pulls it off. A charism of Taizé is that they manage to deliver contemplative retreats for the masses.

How do they pull this off? 

It's pretty simple.

Three times a day the bells ring, calling everyone to the church. As you approach the church volunteers stand outside holding "Silence" signs. You enter the church silently. You pick up a songbook and the readings for the service and find a place to sit. Prayer stools are widely available. People sit crosslegged, on the stool as a short chair, or use the stool to kneel. (I used the stool to kneel.) As the bells ring the brothers, robbed in white, enter and take their places in the middle of the space. After a pause, the liturgy begins. Songs, prayers, and scripture readings. And most distinctively, a ten minute silence. During the final song the brothers process out of the space, and a volunteer continues to lead songs for as long as people remain to sing. 

Also, in the morning service there is Eucharist. The brothers move out into the crowd with bread and wine and the people find the nearest pair. The Friday and Saturday night services also have special elements, which I'll write about later.

And that's basically it. There is a teaching component to Taizé, where each day at 10:00 a brother gives a talk and small groups discuss it in the afternoon. But the heart of the contemplative experience at Taizé are the three daily worship services. 

The genius of Taizé, largely because of their music, is to simply have three beautiful contemplative services a day, along with morning Eucharist, and invite you to share them. That's it. You get a big enough building to allow hundreds of people to share those services and you have the ability to share contemplation with the masses. 

And a key word here is beautiful. It's the distinctive music that draws people to Taizé. The "strategy" of the Taizé community, in its appeal to youth, is to create something simple and beautiful and invite young people into that beauty, allowing it to gently draw them in over the week. 

But there's also something more than beauty. It's beauty+. Which I'll try to describe in the next post.