| For an increasing number of North Americans, the name Taizé evokes a certain style of singing that has become popular in more and more churches, retreat centers, campus parishes, and even seminaries. Some people also know that the word has something to do with retreats or gatherings focused on young adults. Others may even be aware that Taizé is in fact an ecumenical community of brothers located in the small village of that name in the Burgundy region of eastern France.
Today, the Taizé Community is composed of around a hundred brothers. They come from different Christian traditions and from over twenty-five different countries, and make a life commitment to live together in joy, simplicity, and mercy as a "parable of community," a sign of the Gospel's call to reconciliation at the heart of the world. Around the brothers, tens of thousands of people, mainly between the ages of 17 and 30, come throughout each year to spend a week going to the roots of the Christian faith. They join in the community's worship three times a day, listen to Bible introductions on the sources of the faith, spend time reflecting in silence, and meet in small sharing-groups. Spending a week listening to people one's own age from countries as diverse as Lithuania, Canada, the Philippines, and Portugal, all of whom are sharing deeply about their searching and their struggle to live out their faith, can be a life-transforming experience for those who take part. And the community encourages participants, when they return home, to take back what they have discovered and put it into practice in the concrete conditions of their life-in their parishes, their place of work or study, their families. There has never been any question of creating a "Taizé movement"; such an undertaking would simply add to the divisions that veil the face of Christ, who calls us all to live as one body.
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