CHAPTER 3: EUCHARIST IN ECUMENICAL MONASTERIES 121 Saturday evening lectio divina take place in that crypt. It is also used as conference room. The choir and apse drewmy attention first but soon I discovered the water basin with running water in the very back of the church, on the left-hand side of the entrance. It has an icon of Mary hanging over it. On Sunday evenings, the monastics gather here at the end of the prayer service to sing their homage to the Virgin Mary, “Madre del Signore,” portraying Mary subsequently as mother of God, daughter of Israel, and mother of the faithful. This is an example of the “very discreet” 286 Marian devotion which Brother BE mentions. Prayers and Eucharist In Bose, the monastics gather three times a day in the church: for the morning, midday, and evening prayers. The community uses its own lectionary for Bible readings, while observing the Roman Catholic lectionary on Sundays. During the midday prayer, spiritual readings from church fathers or great theologians from the distant or recent past and from different traditions (including, for example, Dietrich Bonhoeffer) are recited. The monastics sing songs from the Bose psalterium and hymn book, often antiphons with the men and women responding to each other (collectively or represented by cantors). Adalberto Mainardi writes about the prayer life of the community: “The liturgy of the hours and daily lectio divina are the central elements of the prayer of the community, and each brother and sister continues his or her own prayer in silence and solitude.”287 On Thursdays (and on another weekday in case of a solemnity), a celebration of the Eucharist replaces the midday prayer. This is the only Mass outside the Sunday morning Eucharist. 288 The fact that Bose limits the Eucharistic celebrations to Sundays and Thursdays has been discussed in the interviews and will be addressed in several sections. Apart from the particular setting and style of Bose, the liturgy does not seem to diverge significantly from the missal. It is presided over by one of Bose’s priests (without the other ordained brothers concelebrating).289 It does attract extra visitors from the village and beyond, in addition to those who stay 286 BE-1,22, cf. Pecklers, “Worship at the Ecumenical Monastery of Bose,” 213. The hymn can be found on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYnCJB-78xg. 287 Mainardi, “Monasticism and Ecumenism,” 260. 288 Keith F. Pecklers S.J. presents a detailed account of Bose’s liturgical practice, including the prayer services and Eucharistic celebrations: Pecklers, “Worship at the Ecumenical Monastery of Bose.” 289 Pecklers, however, notes that the priest occasionally joins the congregation in facing towards the apse during the liturgy. Cf. Pecklers, 214–15.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTk4NDMw