Remembering Brother Roger

Stay with me, remain here with me,

watch and pray, watch and pray

    Voice United 950 -- Jacques Berthier

Yesterday marked the 15th anniversary of the murder of Brother Roger, the remarkable founder of the Taize Christian community in France. Many United Church people know of the community through the contemplative choruses in our Voices United worship resource or the Taize-style services held in some congregations.

Our son, Isaac, lived at Taize for eight months in his early twenties and knew Brother Roger, who was nearly 90 at the time. I visited Taize for two weeks while Isaac was there and would see Brother Roger during daily worship.  

Here is a portion of the obituary written by Marlise Simons in the New York Times two days after his murder by a mentally ill woman in the church where hundreds of thousands had come to worship through the decades, so many of them young and searching

Brother Roger was born Roger Schutz on May 12, 1915, in Provence, a small town in Switzerland, the son of a Swiss Calvinist pastor and a French Protestant mother. After studying theology at the University of Lausanne, he and a group of friends concluded that it might be possible to avert war in Europe if Christians could unite. He left in 1940 for the Burgundy region, where he bought a house in the village of Taizé, not far from the Roman Catholic Abbey of Cluny. He and a small group of theologians and friends gathered there and, among themselves, took monastic vows.

During World War II, even before the group became known as a community, the monks hid refugees, including Jews and resistance fighters. Although they were forced to leave by the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police, the community moved to Geneva and quietly grew. There Brother Roger and other theologians first set out their principles: "to pursue joy, simplicity and compassion." 

They were able to return to Taizé in 1944. Although Brother Roger once said they only wanted to be a community of 15, the Taizé group now includes close to 100 monks from more than 20 countries. Its following grew rapidly during the 1980's and 90's, above all because of his special appeal to young people. 

As his health became more frail and he began using a wheelchair, he named Brother Alois, a German Roman Catholic, to succeed him. The Taizé community said on its Web site yesterday that Brother Alois had taken charge.Brother Roger shunned doctrine, and he and his fellow monks developed chants that merged the meditative prayers of Christian religions.

Part of his appeal may have been his dislike of formal preaching, while encouraging a spiritual quest as a common endeavor. During a Taizé gathering in Paris in 1995, he spoke to more than 100,000 young people who were sitting or lying on the floor of an exhibition hall, amid backpacks and a sea of candles. "We have come here to search," he said, "or to go on searching through silence and prayer, to get in touch with our inner life. Christ always said, Do not worry, give yourself."