Evening Prayer for Europe

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Saturday evening will be a
time of reflection and prayer for the participants of the Congress of
Gniezno. The prayer, presided over by Brothers from the ecumenical
community of Taizé, will be held in the Gniezno Cathedral.

Prayer in the
spirit of Taizé has an exceptionally simple form – it consists of
meditative singing interspersed with readings from the Holy Scripture
and moments of complete silence. All Christians can jointly participate
in such a prayer.

The evening will be
closed with the Liturgy of Light in the Cathedral. During the Liturgy
all the present will light up candles as a token of unity and
acceptance of Christ as the Lord and Saviour.

• brother Marek: Their
  Europe is one already
• photo

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“Their
Europe is one already”
Taizé at the Congress of Gniezno

Contacts of the Taizé community with Christians in
Central and
Eastern Europe date back to the 1960s. The Brothers managed to reach as
far as
Russia, Bulgaria and Romania long before the dismantling of the “iron
curtain”.
For decades young people from the countries of Western Europe
dispatched by the
community, surreptitiously visited their peers on the other side of the
curtain. The Brothers visited Poland for the first time in the autumn
of 1971.
Meetings with them were held at the Catholic University of Lublin, in
diocesan
seminaries in Łódź and Katowice, as well as in student chaplaincy
centres in
Warsaw and Poznań. My first personal contacts with the community hark
back to
this very time. It was then that we, young people who sought support in
the
Gospel, realized for the first time that the same Spirit who we lived
by “here”
and who was present “there” “blows where it wills”. This is how
we, a handful
of lucky ones, began the discovery of one Europe in its spiritual
dimensionZaczęło
się dla nas, garstki szczęściarzy, odkrywanie jednej Europy w wymiarze
duchowym.
As of then, each year there were different
opportunities created for us by the
Brothers, seized and actively sustained by us, which strengthened this
initial
experience. In this context we simply must mention the first European
meeting
of youth, which took place towards the end of the momentous year 1989
in Wrocław.
Someone heard a passenger of a Wrocław tram who commented on what he
saw in the
following manner: “Their Europe is one already”.

Still before the meeting in Wrocław, to take a trip to
Taizé for
meetings of young people was out of reach for many Europeans. Today,
when you
come to Taizé in the summer you can hear all the languages of our
continent,
along with Russian, Bulgarian and Romanian. The youngest ones, those
who cannot
take part in meetings of adult youth, most likely do not remember walls
and
curtains. Still, work is underway so that “their Europe might be one”,
or that
it might be a Europe of the Spirit, and many of us feel urged to take
even more
effort.

Our lifetime adventure in the community and meetings with
young
people have taught us to persevere in a contemplative waiting for God
and to
express Him by simple yet beautiful means commensurate to our
abilities. This
is done in order to create for ourselves and for others a space where
the
Spirit of the Resurrected Christ, the Holy Ghost, will Himself
transform human
hearts and prepare us for facing everyday challenges with
responsibility
wherever we are sent to.

Brother Marek, Taizé

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Photo

Taizé

Brother Roger

Prayer

Prayer

Guests

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