Pope Francis and Christian representatives at the ecumenical prayer service Sept. 30, 2023, in St. Peter’s Square. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez)
By Patrick Downes
Hawaii Catholic Herald
Jon James is a retired Chaminade University English professor, the founder of an orphanage in India, and a perennially disappointed fan of the University of Notre Dame’s football team.
He is also the biggest promoter in Hawaii of the spirituality of Taize, the international ecumenical religious community based in the town of that name in France.
And last month, he was the only person from Hawaii (that he knows of) who attended an event associated with Pope Francis’ synod on synodality.
Upon learning that the ecumenical prayer vigil in St. Peter’s Square Sept. 30, the eve of a three-day retreat for synod participants, was organized by his Taize friends, he dropped everything to attend.
Professor Jon James in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican. (Courtesy photo)
Arriving in Rome too late to acquire the free ticket for the event, he imbedded himself in a band of fast-moving nuns and found himself in the first section up front in the square.
Pope Francis, seated before the San Damiano cross in front of which St. Francis of Assisi said he heard Jesus tell him to “rebuild my church,” prayed that “the synod be a ‘kairos’ (moment) of fraternity, a place where the Holy Spirit will purify the church from gossip, ideologies and polarization.”
Alongside Pope Francis were the leaders of 12 Christian churches and communities, including Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, Anglican Archbishop Justin Welby of Canterbury, Syriac Orthodox Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II and the Rev. Anne Burghardt, general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation.
Some 4,700 young people from 51 countries and belonging to different Christian traditions were present in the square, according to the Taize Community. The Vatican said some 18,000 in total were present.
James said the pope had been asked by a Taize brother to have the synod explicitly invoke the presence of the Holy Spirit. Pope Francis agreed and asked the Taize community to organize the ecumenical prayer vigil that would launch the meeting.
“The atmosphere was incredible,” James said. “The whole inside of the Vatican City had been cleaned, all the colonnade areas and all the saints. It was just sparkling clean. I’d never seen the Vatican like that before.”
“All of the steps were completely decked in flowers of all colors” from the installation of 21 new cardinals that morning. “It was absolutely beautiful,” he said.
“The service itself was impeccably planned,” James said. “It was just so well organized.”
The vigil started with a prayer to the Holy Spirit and four expressions of gratitude: for one another, for the gifts of others, for the gift of peace and for the gift for God’s creation.
Pope Francis told the crowd that silence is necessary to listen to the different perspectives that exist within the Catholic Church and is “essential for the journey of Christian unity.”
Silence “is fundamental to prayer, and ecumenism begins with prayer and is sterile without it,” he said.
To put the vigil’s message into action, eight minutes of silence was observed.
The pope noted that it was “not an empty silence, but a moment filled with faith, expectation and readiness.”
“Pope Francis thanked the Taize community for all that it had done in preparing the prayer service,” James said. “He also thanked them for all their ecumenism and their work with young adults around the globe. I thought it was a nice acknowledgement of the importance of Taize.”
Ukrainian children dressed in traditional outfits and Nigerian musicians performed before for the vigil, which was accompanied by music from the Taize Community.
James was introduced to the work of Taize one summer more than 35 years ago at Cambridge University when he picked up a book on Brother Roger Schutz, Taize’s founder. “I read it and thought, ‘I got to get myself to this place because I think it would really help me.’”
“I have a Protestant and Catholic background,” he explained. “I had problems squaring my two faiths, having been raised in both.”
When Chaminade gave him his first sabbatical he decided to use it to write about contemplative spiritual writers, one of them being Brother Roger.
“I didn’t want to write on their writings, I wanted to actually go and meet them and interact with them. So that’s what I did. I went to Taize.”
He was welcomed by the brothers and spent the next year writing a small book about his experience.
“I was so impressed with just everything. On my first day there walking into evening common prayer I felt like an albatross had been cut off from around my neck,” he said. “Here I was with people from all traditions intensely praying. It was a liberation. It was a sense of the church that I had never had before.”
He started to go to Taize every year for an annual retreat.
“My orphanage work started through them,” he said.
In 1988, James attended the first international Taize meeting outside of Europe, in the southern Indian city of Chennai, then called Madras.
“It was a very thorough immersion” into a culture of poverty, he said.
James was inspired to build an orphanage there, which has since flourished, recently celebrating its first class of college graduates.
In Hawaii, James organized the Good Friday Taize prayer service at the University of Hawaii-Manoa Newman Center. It has been observed for close to 20 years. Taize prayers are also hosted by the Diocese of Honolulu for the annual ecumenical Prayer for Christian Unity in January.
