138 PART TWO: AN EMPIRICAL ACCOUNT his relation to the Reformed and Catholic traditions and certainly referring to their respective liturgical practices, he uses the metaphor of language to illustrate this: I knew always better, that the Christian life, which was lived, that we live in the Catholic Church, or in the Reformed is always the same life, just with other forms, or other words, and uh… I experienced it like this, so… coming here, I got to knew… to know this new language, or this other language, which I didn’t know from the inside, and uh, few by few I entered also in this tradition.337 With recognition in the sense of noticing the similarities comes a level of recognition in the sense of acknowledgement, so it seems. Brother BF, for instance, fully admits that he would partake of the Anglican Eucharist if scandal was avoided.338 Alienation Brother TA and BE mention situations in which they do not feel at home. They refer to very low-church Protestant Eucharistic liturgies. BE speaks in this regard strictly about his own preferences and liturgies that he would actively seek or avoid.339 TA, on the other hand, takes it somewhat further when he contemplates if he would even partake of such liturgies. In his view, this does not only involve his personal preference but also the ecumenical mission of his community. He explicitly brings in the notion of praesentia realis as fundamental in the understanding of the Eucharist in Taizé, over against Christians who ‘merely’ see the sacrament as a symbol. Asked if he still participates in the sacramental life of the Protestant church of his origins, he answers: No, pff, basically not but like I said, that takes place four times a year, so that would be, if you’re only once a year in the Netherlands {laughs}, but, I, I, no, I would not… If I would be in the Netherlands, I would participate, I mean, it depends a little… But then, indeed, we have um… … Taizé we have quite a… … … high… idea of Eucharist. For us it is really the body and blood of Christ. I mean, how that exactly, which uh {both laugh}, theological technical term you would 337 BE-1,70. 338 BF-1,24. 339 BE-1,72.
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