156 PART TWO: AN EMPIRICAL ACCOUNT BF carefully reconstructs the situation in which he found himself. This episode in his life clearly is very dear to him and important in understanding his own ecumenical process. The precise depiction of the life in the small community is key to understanding the insights BF introduces soon after. He concludes: So, after two years and a half, uh, for me it became normal to consider uh… … other Christians just as Christians, I mean. But at the same time knowing the differences, the problems, and, tryi~ well, starting since Neuchâtel, starting to feel the scandal of the division. (…) And especially, the problem of the Eucharist um, was, what uh, was an evident contradiction to uh, everything we were living.372 BF expresses a core experience in this section: he understands the Eucharistic reality with which he is confronted to contradict the life he leads. This is a very strong expression: not only do the two realities not correspond, but the way BF experiences that the Eucharist in this period even contradicts the life shared with Christians from other denominations. He explains this further by elaborating on the Sunday routine: So, on Sunday um, we were only two, only me and Daniel, on Sunday, I went to the Roman Catholic Mass in the village nearby, and Daniel was celebrating uh, the service in the Protestant temple. Uh, and for the rest we prayed three times a day together, we received the priests and pastors, pray with them, discuss with them, and then, the moment uh, as I told you the other time, in the moment in which you celebrate the only reason for which we are together, you have to separe, and to be divided. So, this grew up as a sort of uh… permanent, uh, a permanent aporia, permanent not reasonable wall, I mean.373 I will refer to these quotes again in section 6.1 about the notion of scandal. For now, I want to focus on the discontinuity that BF experiences between the intimate common life and close cooperation with the priests and pastors on the one hand, and the division at the Eucharist on the other. In Brother BF’s understanding, the experience of a shared life is preceded by, and should logically result in, a common celebration of the Eucharist. 372 BF-1,2e. 373 BF-1,2e
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