122 PART TWO: AN EMPIRICAL ACCOUNT in the guest house for a period of time. However, the community discourages their guests attending this liturgy as a permanent alternative to their own local parishes.290 When I participated in the Sunday Mass in March 2019, the building was completely packed with visitors who attended Brother Enzo’s lecture later that afternoon. With all seats taken and all available spare rooms around them occupied by guests, many visitors had to find a place behind the monastics, filling the church all the way to the apse. This revealed to me the level of popularity the community and its founder enjoy in Italy and abroad. Several of the monastics assisted with the administration of Communion to their brothers and sisters – including the non-Catholic members – and the guests. All received both the consecrated bread and wine by way of intinction. Pecklers notes that the ecumenical nature of the community has affected its way of celebrating the Eucharist: following the ancient monastic tradition of ordaining only a sufficient number of presbyters to attend to the necessary pastoral ministrations. As a lay and ecumenical community founded on a common baptism, there is therefore no eucharistic concelebration among the presbyters. (…) The proclamation of the gospel and preaching of the homily, however, are shared by various brothers and sisters who have been tested and judged by the Bose community to be gifted in preaching.291 Due to these characteristic customs, the Eucharist in Bose has its own atmosphere, without giving the impression that the community deviates significantly from the Roman rite. 290 Pecklers, 212. 291 Pecklers, 212.
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