It’s impossible to make a choice without giving up other options forever. If we don’t, we’re a bunch of naysayers: we’re willing to say yes, but in the moment, without continuity.

The “yes” to marriage – like the “yes” to celibacy in the Gospel – puts us on a knife-edge. It involves the whole person, his body and all his inner resources: intelligence, sensitivity, affectivity and imagination.

By refusing to look back, the person who says yes tells Christ over and over again, for the rest of his life: “I trust you, I’ll take your word for it. If we wait for total lucidity before saying a yes that remains a yes, aren’t we exposing ourselves to having nothing but leftovers to offer?

Once pronounced, the yes is the pivot around which continuous creativity is built, it is a column around which man twirls in freedom, a source near which he dances.



Lutte et contemplation, journal de Fr. Roger – Taizé, Presses de Taizé/Seuil