Holy Week in Taize

Happy Easter, Christ is risen!

First of all a little update on community members: We are five again with the Walker family and James. However, in addition to us all, our little group of pilgrims to Taize included another lady who will be moving in soon.

The family programme in Olinda this year is very good, as always, and tells the story of Moses and the people in captivity. The Bible introductions were excellent and created a real interest in Exodus. The themes (slavery, freedom, God who sees the people’s suffering and does not give up on them, sense and liberation out of chaos) fit so well together with the readings in church for Holy Week and Easter. On Easter Sunday very early the church was first dark and then there was an ocean of light as the light from the Easter candle was passed on to the little candles everyone was holding. The joyful Easter greeting echoed in dozens of languages. I am still very happy almost a week after getting home; if only the joy would last as long as the season of Easter!

We travelled by coach and I had time to dive into the life of young Thomas Merton as he describes it in the Seven Storey Mountain. What an amazing memory and skilled story telling! I’m only a third of the way through but my favourite so far is the funny part where he tells of the (very) English school chaplain who preached a rather poor sermon on 1 Corinthians 13 and in the boys’ minds ‘love’ was replaced with ‘gentlemanliness’. “And now these three remain: faith, hope and gentlemanliness. But the greatest of these is gentlemanliness.”

Don’t miss the Weekend of Reflection at Lunesdale Community 15-17 June where we will be studying the Letter from Taize for 2018: Inexhaustible Joy.