Br. Roger of Taize - Rest in Peace

When I was young, at a time when Europe was torn apart by so many conflicts, I kept on asking myself: Why all these confrontations?  Why do so many people, even Christians, condemn one another out of hand?  And I wondered:  is there, on this earth, a way of reaching complete understanding of others?  Then came a day - I can still remember the date, and I could describe the place:  the subdued light of a late summer evening, darkness settling over the countryside -- a day when I made a decision.  I said to myself, if this way does exist, begin with yourself and resolve to understand every person fully.  That day, I was certain the vow I had made was for life.  It involved nothing less than returning again and again, my whole life long, to this irrevocable decision:  seek to understand all, rather than to be understood.

Br. Roger of Taize 1915-2005

On August 16, during a prayer service at Taize,

Brother Roger is fatally wounded by a mentally unbalanced assailant.

  He dies at the age of ninety.

Leo Tolstoy (8-28-1828 to 11-20-1910)

I admit that I am guilty, and vile, and worthy of contempt for failing to carry out Christ's teaching.  At the same time, not to justify myself, but simply to explain my lack of consistency, I say:  "Look at my life now and compare it to my former life.  You will see that I am trying to live out the truth I proclaim.  True, I have not fulfilled a fraction of Christ's will, and I am ashamed of this, but I have failed to fulfill his Word not because I do not wish to, but because I have been unable to.  Teach me how to escape from the net of temptations that surrounds me, help me, and I will fulfill Christ's teachings.  Even without help I wish and hope to fulfill them.  Attack me, I do this myself, but attach me rather than the path I follow, which I point out to anyone who asks me where I think it lies.  If I know the way home and am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right way simply because I am staggering side to side?


"If it is not the right way, then show me another way.  But if I stagger and lose the way, you must help me and keep me on the true path, just as I am ready to support you.  Do not mislead me, do not be glad that I have gotten lost, do not gleefully shout, 'Look at him!  He said he was going home, but there he is crawling into a bog!'  No, do not gloat, but give me your help and support.  For you are not devils in the swamp, but people like me who are seeking the way home.  For I am alone and it cannot be that I wish to go into the swamp.  Help me, my heart is breaking in despair that we have all lost our way."


So this is my attitude to Christ's teaching.  I try to fulfill it with all I've got.  I not only repent for each failure, but also beg for help in fulfilling it.  And I joyfully welcome anyone who, like me, is looking for the path; and I listen to him.

Forgiveness

You forgive not in order to change the other person, but simply to follow Christ.

Br. Roger of Taize

True Evangelization

Communicating Christ never means trying to impose oneself.  The Gospel is not a vise that clamps down upon another person's conscience and entraps that person.  A believer from Bangladesh, speaking about those around him who do not know Christ, said, "When you are near a fire, you are warmed.  When the fire of God's love is in us, does it not shine on those who are close to us, even if we do not realize it?"

Healing

I am not a mechanism, an assembly of various sections.

And it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly, that I am ill.

I am ill because of wounds to the soul, to the deep emotional self,

And wounds to the soul take a long, long time,

Only time can help,

And patience, and a certain difficult repentance,

Long, difficult repentance, realization of life's mistake,

And the freeing oneself from the endless repetition of the mistake

Which mankind at large has chosen to sanctify.

"Healing" by D.H. Lawrence

Morality and Law

It may be true that morality can’t be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. It may be true that legislation cannot change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless. It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Conversion

“Dramatic experiences of conversion may have their value but their meaning is in opening a new phase of life. This vow is a commitment to be always a pilgrim, living an ongoing conversion of one’s way of life by an ever fuller harmony with the principles of peace, tolerance, selflessness and generosity and the courage to say the truth about injustice.”

Laurence Freeman, O.S.B.

Community and Conversion

“The monks have come to know that their community is constituted by their commitment to conversion. And they know that conversion is turning from themselves to their brethren in community; and to Christ in prayer; and to God in Christ.”
John Main, O.S.B.