From the Rector…
Several years ago, I spent a week in Taizé, France. Taizé is an ecumenical community whose mission is to reconcile the world with itself. It was founded by Brother Roger, a Catholic priest on the heels of World War II. Brother Roger helped people escape the Nazi’s. He lived in the little town of Taizé, near Cluny and close to the demarcation line of free Europe. Toward the end of the war, he was discovered and fled to Switzerland where he established a community with set prayers while continuing his work of helping people escape from Europe. The prayers were repetitively sung and mostly scripture inspired. The liturgy includes contemplative silence. Brother Roger was martyred several years ago but his work of reconciliation continues in the powerful and deeply moving experience of this style of worship and work of the brotherhood of this ecumenical community.
In my time at Taizé, we would often sing,
Stay with me, remain here with me
Watch and pray
at the close of the last worship service of the day. The liturgy invited you to stay and sing as long as you wanted/needed to pray. The prayers would be sung over and over and over again and, in the repetition, you found yourself being drawn into a greater spiritual awareness—you wanted to stay and pray as long as seemed possible.
The hauntingly beautiful words of the hymn Stay With Me are inspired by Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane as he admonishes his disciples to keep awake and to pray. Three times he admonishes them, “can you not keep awake one hour?” Jesus knows what they do not, his time has come. The cross looms near.
Every year on Maundy Thursday, I am reminded of that Taizé song and how powerfully it resonates with my own spirit. I know that had I been a disciple present that night, I too would have fallen asleep—asleep to my own life, to God’s call to me, to the gifts that God is always offering me. I am so often asleep to them now, of course I would have been then as well. As we strip the altar, my own soul is stripped as well, and it lays bare all the failings of my life as a Jesus follower. I don’t reside in that place permanently, but on that night, the night before Christ dies, I can spend one hour watching and praying.
The Gethsemane Watch is an all-night vigil in which we are invited to spend one hour watching and praying. Members of the parish take turns sitting in the chapel keeping vigil over the Reserve Sacrament that is consumed at the Good Friday service. It is a sacrificial time of peace and persistence in prayer. It is a time when we are invited to enter into the intimate space of Jesus’ final hours upon the earth—to watch with him and pray with him.
His request of the disciples to stay awake and pray is not a selfish one. In the Gospels, the prayer he invites them to make is one of protection for themselves, “…pray that you may not come into the time of trial.” Even as he faces his own trial and death, his encouragement to his followers is that they will not face the same.
Our Gethsemane Watch is about staying with Jesus—keeping watch with him and praying. In that time of watching and praying, it is not simply a desire for a better relationship with God that we enter, it is the strength and courage to face all that lies ahead and distracts us from the joys and peace of kingdom life. As we look toward a season rife with political friction and the unknown—which always elicits fear—taking time to stay awake, even one hour, and sit with Jesus can help strengthen our resolve and encourage our fortitude for the days ahead.
I invite you to be part of our Gethsemane Watch—our Maundy Thursday vigil—in which we keep watch over Christ’s body and blood in the form of the sacrament. It is an all-night vigil in which you can sign up for one-hour increments. You can click HERE to do so or use the QR code in the announcement below.
Watch and pray,
Candice+