Second Letter to the People of God

The Taize community, located near the French village bearing this name, is an ecumenical monastery which has witnessed to the life of prayer and sharing together in community. For many protestants Taize has been an inspiring model of the monastic tradition carried on outside of the Catholic Church. In the summer of 1974, Taize embarked in a new direction by holding its Council of Youth. About 40,000 young people from 120 countries gathered to discuss the world’s needs and the church’s mission. One result was a “Letter to the People of God,” calling for the church to follow more faithfully Christ’s way of simplicity and obedience. Subsequently, Taize’s Prior, Roger Shultz, and a team of young adults spent several weeks in the slums of Calcutta, India, and Chittagong, Bangladesh. There they served the poor, suffering, and dying, while also spending time in prayer and reflection. From that experience they wrote a “Second Letter to People of God.” It was presented originally at a special ecumenical service including officials and representatives from Catholic, Orthodox, and various Protestant denominations, held at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. The text of the letter follows.

In Asia, we have been confirmed in our certainty that the wounds now tearing humanity apart can surely be healed. If we could only convey that conviction, here and now, to all those who feel that they have exhausted in vain every possible resource in their commitment for a more human world.

We came here bringing a presence within us, that of so many women and men who feel utterly weary and helpless; some of them fall into despondency or grow resigned, while others plunge into the violence of despair.

Now we are leaving, after having discovered, in the very heart of deep distress, a people’s astonishing vitality, and having encountered witnesses to another future for all.

As a contribution to this future, the people of God has one possibility all its own: spread across the entire world, it can build up a parable of sharing in the human family. Such a parable will have force enough to propagate itself, shaking even the most immovable systems and creating communion throughout the whole human family.

To lead the people of God into this radicalism of the Gospel you, now reading this letter, whether you be young or old, begin at once to make your own life a parable of sharing, by accomplishing concrete acts whatever the cost.

Along the way in Asia, many poor people especially are ahead of you.

The creation with others of a parable of sharing is first and foremost a question of material possessions. It begins with a transformation of the way you live.

Already in the fourth century a bishop, Ambrose of Milan, was deeply concerned at seeing how Christians were accumulating wealth. He wrote, “It is in common, for all, that the earth was created. Nature knows no rich, she gives birth only to poor. When you give to the poor, it is not from your own wealth, it is a fragment of their property you are returning to them, for it is common property, given for all to use, that you are keeping for yourself.”

In transforming your life, nobody is asking you to opt for stark austerity without any beauty or joy.

Share everything you have, and freedom will be yours.

Resist the urge to consume--the more you buy the more you need. The accumulation of reserves, for yourself or for your children, is the beginning of injustice.

Sharing supposes a relationship of equals; it never makes others dependent. This is true both between individuals and between nations.

It is not possible to change living standards overnight. So we call upon families, Christian communities and Church leaders, to establish a plan covering seven years, enabling them to give up, in successive stages, everything that is not absolutely indispensable, beginning with what is spent on prestige. And on this point, how could we possibly ignore the scandal of the prestige spending which governments indulge in!

Sharing is also going to mean changes in where you live.

Turn your home into a place of constant welcome, a house of peace and forgiveness.

Simplify where you live, but without demanding the same of older people whose homes are filled with memories... With great age intuitions of God arise, which help the young to advance.

You have neighbors, on your staircase, or down the street. Take the time to get involved with them. You will find great loneliness. You will also see that the boundary of injustice is not only between one continent and another, but lies a few hundred yards from your door.

Invite people to share a meal. A spirit of festival has more to do with simplicity than with large quantities of food.

As a concrete expression of solidarity, certain people will go so far as to move into another neighborhood, anxious to live among people whom society has forgotten about-the old, foreigners, immigrants… Remember that in all the world’s great cities, to a greater or lesser extent, zones of poverty exist alongside zones bursting with affluence!

The parable of sharing also concerns your working life.

Spare no effort to obtain a greater equality of wages, as well as working conditions fit for human beings.

When career or competition, the desire for a high salary or consumer demands are your basic reasons for working, you are not far from exploiting other people, or being exploited yourself.

Work to earn what you need, never to accumulate more.

Sharing involves the human family as a whole. It is essential to struggle together for the goods of the earth to be rightly shared. A redistribution of wealth requires the industrialized nations to do more than just give away their surplus. The systems underlying international injustice must be changed at all costs. It is the real needs of every person, down to the very least of all, which is the reference point, and not what will satisfy the needs of westernized people.

There is only one human family. No people, and no single person, is excluded from it. So how could we ever tolerate the fact that members of the human family are victims of racism, are locked away in political prisons, or are put through all kinds of violence? The evil of torture is current practice today in over ninety countries. At the present time, human freedom is diminishing and even completely disappearing.

With so many wounds to be healed in the human family, we are always called to work on several different levels at once. Accept the fact that others, who have the same aim as you, choose a different path. Some, with fierce determination, set out to change the structures of society through a long term political struggle. Others commit themselves in direct actions of immediate solidarity with the victims of society.

Where will you find the energies of love to dare go on taking risks until your dying breath?

If a person has never experienced human love, or has none to offer, can he or she ever understand a struggle for others and a life of communion in God?

Prayer is a source of loving for you. The image of God in us is a burning of love. In total selflessness, abandon yourself, body and spirit. Every day go deeply into a few lines of the Scriptures, to be brought face to face with Another, with the risen Lord. In silence, let a living word of Christ be born in you, then put it into practice right away.

When it comes to praying with the people of God, arrange your local church to make it welcoming, as homelike as orthodox churches which have never enclosed themselves in rigid lines of pews or chairs. Elsewhere, since the sixteenth century, words have gradually invaded churches, to such an extent that the worship of the people of God risks being an intellectual exercise rather than radiant communion.

We long to have letters of fire to write what we have found across the world in these last years: mingling with the lament that rises from the hurts of so many people there is another melody, a song full of hope. In Asia we have heard it clearly. That melody, still muted and hidden, is the song of a communion promised to all humanity. And in it the people of God tries to be present in the situations of today’s world, it is not surprising that it too is shaken by crisis after crisis. Yet everywhere new beginnings, new awakenings are discernible in the Body of Christ, his Church. You too are part of its becoming.

If the Church gives up all that is not absolutely essential, if she resolves to be nothing but a servant of communion and of sharing in the midst of humanity, she will play her part in healing the wounds of the human family. She will make systems of injustice totter, be able to turn back the waves of pessimism.

By the parable of sharing, the Church, in the midst of the divided human family, will be a seed from which will spring a quite different future for all. She will bring a hope which has no end.