May Taizé: National Day of Prayer

Taize for May: National Day of Prayer
May 4 (Thursday) 7-8 p.m.

This month’s Taizé Service falls on May 4, which is also the annual National Day of Prayer in the United States. There are many things that we can pray about for our country. Tonight, we will focus on peace and nonviolence.

Differences in opinions can easily escalate to raised voices, which easily escalate to the use of violence against the other. We pray for calm hearts and cool tempers.

Download a program for the service here: Taizé Service Worship Aid for May 4, 2023.

Prayer

We stand here, loving God, freed from our bondage, filled with the fire of Your love and Your passion for peace, a fire that burns deep in our hearts and our souls. We stand here before You reborn, made new, renewed in spirit and recommitted to the struggle for peace and justice for those who cry out for an end to their anguish. Send us forth as Your servants, Your instruments, Your Presence in our world. We ask all of this in the name of the One who walked this path before us. Amen.

What is Taizé?

Taizé prayer is practiced throughout the world. It is a meditative candle-lit form of community prayer that includes simple chants sung repeatedly, silence and prayers of praise and intercession. In prayer, we enter the silence, stilling the mind, opening the heart, surrendering to the action of the Spirit ever molding us into the image of Christ.

The candles used in the service symbolize the presence of the risen Christ, who conquered darkness and sin and offers new life to all humankind. Taizé Prayer comes from an ecumenical, monastic community in France and has spread to numerous spots around the world. From the depths of the human condition, a secret aspiration rises up.

Today many are thirsting for the essential reality: an inner life, signs of the Invisible. Nothing is more conducive to communion with the living God than meditative common prayer. When the mystery of God becomes tangible through the simple beauty of symbols, when it is not smothered by too many words, then a common prayer awakens us to heaven’s joy on earth.

Music in this video used with permission under onelicense.net, #A-725830

All the videos of our Taizé prayer services are available here.

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