136 PART TWO: AN EMPIRICAL ACCOUNT Taizé’s mission to promote the Eucharist towards its guests: “we want to arouse interest for the Eucharist, indeed, both Protestants and Catholics. And that, to me, is a beautiful thing, indeed, that some Catholics who come here say: ‘wow, thanks to Taizé I, I understand better what it is in me~ or what happens in my church suddenly interests me again {laughs}, every Sunday.’ And that I find beautiful, that is wonderful.”331 For Brother TB, too, the liturgy of Taizé was something new. In a section in which he focuses on the similarities between the Reformed and Catholic liturgies celebrated at the time, he adds: But the discovery was the Eucharistic liturgy as such, because in that Reformed church, at least in Switzerland um, in the French speaking part of Switzerland there is a bit more liturgical tradition, due to a renewal between the two World Wars... and in the German speaking Switzerland, it was less... And so, that was a kind of discovery, of the whole... Eucharistic liturgy here.332 TB thus gives witness to his discovery of the Eucharist but, at the same time, expresses another type of response: one of recognition. Recognition Indeed, Brother TB gives more attention to the notion that, at the time he arrived in Taizé, the Reformed and Catholic liturgies appeared quite similar. He could not quite differentiate between the two due to their textual and aesthetic similarities: And then, at that time, when I came as a visitor, I didn't ask too many questions because... at that time there were celebrations on Sundays sometimes uh... presided by uh... a pastor, one of the brothers pastor, and sometimes by the brothers who were priests, or other guests, but um, the liturgy was practically the same, so, if you didn't know, you were not really... much aware of that, and, and then... for Communion, people were invited to go rather left or right, but also it was not so... if you really wanted to know, you could know, but if you didn't care too much, you weren't probably... always aware of what was going on... ... um... ... And then, and then, when I joined the community, of course it became more... understood more.333 331 TA-1,46c. 332 TB-1,4b. 333 TB-1,4b.
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