Image Credit: “The Lord’s angel announced to Mary…” Photo by Lucas. Copyright CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 (www.creativecommons.org). Original: Flickr

All are welcome at this Taize Prayer in Sheffield Cathedral. The Prayer includes scripture readings, repeated chants and silence. 

The Taizé community is an ecumenical monastic order of over one hundred brothers based in a village in southeast France. Over 100,000 young people make a pilgrimage to Taizé each year to share in worship, bible study and community life. Three times each day everything stops on the hill of Taizé as the bells call everyone to the church for prayer. Hundreds, sometimes thousands of young adults from many different countries across the world pray and sing with the brothers of the community. Short songs sung over and over again that, in a few words, express a basic reality, quickly grasped by the mind. Then the Bible is read in several languages. At the centre of every prayer service, a long moment of silence offers an irreplaceable opportunity to encounter God.