Taizé: Pilgrimage and Prayer All Around Rhode Island

The Taizé Community is an ecumenical monastic order in France made up of over 100 brothers from various countries and Christian backgrounds. The community has been around since the 1940’s, but these days it has become one of the most important sites of pilgrimage in modern Christianity, welcoming over 100,000 young pilgrims from around the world each year.

Rhode Island is no exception to this. Bishop Wolf has a long history with Taizé, and for quite some time now the Diocese of Rhode Island has sponsored a Taizé pilgrimage for 18-30 year olds at the end of each May. (Taizé caters their programs to this age group, but there is always room for a few “adults” to come along on the trip).

But what is all this Taizé fuss about? Well, to best serve the throngs of linguistically diverse pilgrims who find their way to the community, the brothers have developed a fantastic form of multilingual prayer and chant. Their website explains their simple chants as follows:

“Using just a few words they express a basic reality of faith, quickly grasped by the mind. As the words are sung over many times, this reality gradually penetrates the whole being. Meditative singing thus becomes a way of listening to God. It allows everyone to take part in a time of prayer together and to remain together in attentive waiting on God… To open the gates of trust in God, nothing can replace the beauty of human voices united in song.”

At the monastery, these sung prayers accompany a program of bible study, fellowship, and communal work. It is the repetition of the words within the songs and the repetition of the songs within the thrice-daily prayer services that keep the prayers repeating in the silence of your heart throughout the day’s activities. As you can probably imagine, the simple, kind, and contemplative Taizé prayer experience has been so wildly meaningful to so many pilgrims, that many have brought Taizé prayer home to be a part of their lives and parishes.

In Rhode Island we now have four parishes that hold prayer services at least loosely inspired by Taizé. The Diocese sponsors one at the Cathedral of St. John, at 4pm on the second Sunday of each month. Christ Church in Westerly and St Paul’s in Pawtucket both also offer regular evening services, and St. Ann’s on Block Island was recently featured in the Block Island Times for their service in the Taizé style. Check out the article, titled In Taize, Less is More. Keep an eye on your eRISEN newsletter to find out when and where the next Taizé service is happening. Don’t receive it? You can sign up here.

If you would like to learn more about bringing Taizé to your parish or would like to come along on this year’s pilgrimage, please email ty@episcopalri.org  or visit the RI Taizé Facebook page.