Taize founder Brother Roger murdered

90-year-old founder of Taize religious community murdered

The Church mourns the senseless and horrible loss of one of her saints who stands with Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa in founding a movement that will long outlast his own century. Brother Roger's Taize
community epitomizes the combination of contemplation and action, adoration and responsibility. Anyone who's ever struggled to create an ecumenical worship experience knows of the risks involved in cobbling together established forms: Brother Roger's community birthed a new and yet familiar way for all Christian to be together in the presence of God. Taize worship forces you out of yourself into a purer place where God is, as you touch the early Christians through their words and the future of Christianity through your own thoughts.

I know so little about Taize, and yet I feel the loss of Brother Roger very close to my heart. In anything of his I've ever read he perfectly combines personal humility with unafraid celebration of God's greatness. (Read his most recent yearly meditation here.) He believed in the promise of young people and knew that Christians of different traditions who worship together move beyond dialogue to a place of true communion. The fact that he was still serving as leader of his community at age 90 testifies to the energy and joy of a life lived for God. To honor his life of generous service, ended so unnaturally, try only to imagine the legacy he leaves in the millions moved by Taize, a continuation of his energy which no attack can stop. May God, who surely already rejoices in Brother Roger's company, expand and multiply the energy of his followers for work, for contemplation, and for good.