Poetry Pilgrimage to Taizé
The annual Clongowes Pilgrimage to the ecumenical retreat centre at Taizé took place again at Easter when ten Poetry students, accompanied by their prefect Mr. Tom Carroll and Mr. Cyril Murphy, Director of Liturgy, spent a week together in the middle of France. Students from Poetry have undertaken the Pilgrimage from Clongowes for almost twenty years and each time the experience proves worthwhile. Taizé is one of the world’s most important sites of Christian pilgrimage and is visited each year by over 100,000 young people from around the world for prayer, Bible study, sharing, and communal work. Through the community’s ecumenical outlook, they are encouraged to live in a spirit of kindness, simplicity and reconciliation.
While you would expect spring like temperatures in the mid teens at Easter, this year the group fell foul of the cold weather across Europe with temperatures plunging at night. However, rather than spending the night in their tent, the Clongowes ‘pilgrims’ went instead to the church where they slept and ‘probably’ prayed as well! Once again the group was hosted by Br. Jean-Marie of the Taizé Community, who is no stranger to Clongowes having stayed here a couple of years ago when he visited Ireland. The Taizé experience is hard to capture in words, but if you would like to know more about it log onto the web site www.Taizé.fr and share in some of the prayer and experiences of this special place.
