Taizé for Lent: Encountering God in prayerful silence

Lent is a Season of Repentance. We are called to renew our commitment to our Baptism. Repentance is a turning away from the sins and mistakes of the past and a turning toward God.

The psalms of Lent share the message of God’s mercy and the people’s redemption. Penance does not mean sadness. We take joy in God’s mercy and love!

Lent is an opportunity for the community of faith to pause and reawaken to the bounty of God’s love. The goal of this season is to deepen our communal and individual awareness that God deeply loves us, and as our awareness deepens, so too do our relationships.

This month, let us rest in God’s mercy and love. Let us encounter God in prayerful silence.

Closing Prayer

Blessed are You, Lord our God, for You have created a wide and wonderful world in which we can travel. We ask Your Blessing upon us as we make this Lenten journey.

Be our ever-near companion, and spread the road before us with beauty and adventure.

May we be accompanied by Your holy spirits, Your angelic messengers, as were the holy ones of days past. On this journey may we take with us, as part of our traveling equipment, a heart wrapped in wonder with which to rejoice in all that we shall meet.

May we have room in our luggage for a mystic map by which we can find the invisible meanings of the events of this journey, of possible disappointments and delays, of possible breakdowns and rainy day troubles.

Always awake to Your Sacred Presence, to Your Divine Compassionate Love, may we see in all that happens to us, in the beautiful and the bad, the Mystery of Your Holy Plan.

May the Blessing of God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, be upon us throughout this journey, and bring us home in safety and peace.

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.

Photo Credit: Photo 210487215 / Lent Ashes © Verastuchelova | Dreamstime.com

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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