Brother Roger believed that a life of community made up of men constantly searching for reconciliation could become a sign. That is the primary vocation of Taize to constitute what he called “a parable of communion.”
His Life
Brother Roger was the youngest child of a Swiss father
and a French mother, who were both Reformed. He was born on May 12th
1915 in Switzerland, the tenth child of the family. His father was a pastor in
the Jura and used to pray in a Catholic church every now and then, which was
remarkable for a Swiss pastor at that time. Brother Roger’s grandmother was a
source of inspiration to him. She was convinced that reconciliation among
Christians was needed to prevent a new war, and therefore, she started
attending the Roman Catholic church. When brother Roger was thirteen years
old, he spent the afternoons at the house of a poor Catholic family. The faith
of this family inspired him, and the division between Christians became a
serious obstacle for his own faith.
Brother Roger from his youth onwards longed to start a
community. He had written a book about community life; the editor however
wanted him to revise the end, but brother Roger was not willing to do so. It
was then that he decided to create unity among people by means of a community
and not by writing. Brother Roger’s goal with community life was not just
reconciliation among Christians, but a means to restore unity among all people,
and to bring about world peace. Before he was twenty years old, he became
seriously ill due to tuberculosis. This forced him into a long period of
solitude, quietness and reflection. It was then that he made long walks by
himself, a habit, he never gave up. When he reached the age of twenty, brother
Roger started studying theology at Lausanne and Strasbourg and became a pastor
in Reformed theology.
In 1939, at the start of the Second World War, being a
student in Switzerland, brother Roger started what was called: “La Grande
Communauté”: a group of about thirty students, studying issues of faith,
gathering every month. They prayed, worked and ate together. They organized
retreats that attracted many people. Brother Roger then moved to France to find
a place where he could house his community, and found a suitable house in
Taizé, a small village close to Cluny, where he stayed from 1940-1942. He chose
to stay in Taizé because a poor widow of Taizé asked him to stay: Brother Roger
felt Christ’s call through the voice of this poor woman.
Taizé was situated on the border that ran through
France at that time, and brother Roger helped refugees cross the border,
especially Jews. He followed in
the footsteps of his grandmother, who had helped refugees during the First
World War. During those days he observed a devotional structuring of the day by
praying three times a day, even today in Taizé, prayer remains at the heart of
everything, the energy from which action flows. Because of some raids of the
Gestapo, brother Roger was forced to leave France for Geneva in 1942, until the
end of 1944.
In Geneva brother Roger became president of the
Association of Christian Students, and often discussed his ideas about unity
among Christians. In 1944, six
brothers set out for Taizé, including brother Roger. They took care of twenty
orphans of war and looked after German war prisoners in the prison camp nearby.
The prisoners were deeply hated by the villagers and the brothers tried to
reconcile the German prisoners with the people of Taizé. The villagers were amazed to see that
the brothers did not impose their religious convictions upon the children, but
gave them the liberty to make their own choices. So many came to join them in
their prayer services that in 1947 the brothers requested the use of the old
roman village church.
As the group grew and time passed by, brother Roger
wanted to change the non-committal character of their community. On Easter Day
1949, seven brothers took the vows of the community. During the winter of 1952-53, frère Roger wrote the Rule of
Taizé, at request of his brothers. The community kept growing as more men felt called
to become a brother there. Brother Roger lived most of the time within the
community of Taizé, but just as some groups of brothers spread throughout the
world to live among the poor, so did he. Brother Roger has lived for some
periods of his life in Calcutta, Chili, Haiti, Ethiopia, the Philippines, South
Africa, and other places throughout the world. In 1975, mother Theresa visited
Taizé, and brother Roger went to Calcutta for five weeks to work together with
her. Mother Theresa entrusted him
with the weak baby girl Marie-Sonaly, who had no chances of survival in
Calcutta. Roger took her to Taizé and raised her, and she still lives in Taizé.
Brother Roger was murdered August 2005, at the age of
ninety, by a deranged woman during the evening prayer.
His Passion for Christian Unity
Towards the end of his
life the Taizé Community was attracting international attention, welcoming
thousands of young pilgrims every week, which it has continued to do after his
death. Brother Roger knew that all by themselves no one could
solve all the problems, theological and other, that split up the Body of
Christ, the Church. At the same time, faced with the urgent need to communicate
the Gospel, remaining passive was not an option for him. His conclusion: let us
begin with ourselves, and widen our vision of the Church by opening ourselves
to the gifts of faith, hope and love lived by Christians of other traditions.
Brother
Roger’s option implied a vision of the Church quite different from that which
people usually have. We tend to imagine the Christian landscape as made up of
different confessions or denominations existing side by side, each one claiming
to be the true heir to Christ. But this human vision is deceptive. Seen with
God’s eyes, the Church can only be one. It is not a reality of competition but
of communion. All those who live in communion with God through Christ are led
by this to live in communion with one another: “It is by the love that unites you that all will know that you are my
disciples,” Jesus tells us (John 13:35).
Born in a
Protestant family, Brother Roger was led to go back behind the divisions of the
sixteenth century and to rediscover the great Catholic Tradition. Very early,
he was also attentive to the treasures of faith of the Eastern Church. In doing
this, he never wished to break fellowship with anyone or be a symbol of
repudiation for those who transmitted the faith to him. Any idea of a “conversion,” a change from one
denomination to another, was utterly foreign to him. He was always captivated
by the words of Jesus “I did not come to
abolish, but to fulfill” (Matthew 5:17) and he tried to anticipate this
fulfillment in his personal life as well as in the life of the community he
founded.
Christian unity was certainly one of the
deepest desires of brother Roger, just as the division between Christians was
for him a true source of pain and regret. Brother Roger was a man of communion,
who found it hard to tolerate any form of antagonism or rivalry between persons
or communities. When he spoke of Christian unity and of his meetings with the
representatives of different Christian traditions, his look and his voice
enabled you to understand with what intensity of charity and hope he desired “all to be one”. The search for unity
was for him a kind of guideline in even the most concrete decisions of each
day: to welcome joyfully any action that could bring Christians of different
traditions closer, to avoid every word or act that could slow down their
reconciliation.
A prayer by
Brother Roger
O
God the Father of all, you ask every one of us to spread love and
reconciliation where people are divided You open this way for us, so that the
wounded body of Jesus Christ, your church, may be leaven of communion for the poor
of the earth and in the whole human family.
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