March Taizé: Embraced by Love

Lent is both penitential and baptismal in nature. The point of our Lenten practices is not to congratulate ourselves on how holy we are becoming; rather, they are to help us see that true peace resides not in us but in God.

The focus of our readings and meditations in March will be the story of Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before his death. It will be a meditation on God’s loving embrace.

During Lent, we pray, fast, and give alms to keep us focused and to help us prepare. The season is a time that we can slow down our busy lives, to be better able to see God working in and through us.

When our lives are about nothing more than worldly goods, we’ve missed the mark – we’ve ignored the chance to grow in holiness, we’ve ignored the chance to grow in love for God. Enter into the silence. Embrace it. Let Christ speak to you in the silence as he makes his way of the cross.

Download a program for the service here: Taizé Service Worship Aid for March 3, 2022.

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.

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

The image above is a carved relief of Jesus at prayer in Gethsemane, part of the baroque Calvary in Banska Stiavnica, Slovakia, by Dionyz Stanetti from the years 1744-1751. Photo © Jozef Sedmak | Dreamstime.com