CHAPTER 5: DYNAMICS OF COMMON LIFE AND COMMON EUCHARIST 175 profoundly in the counter-experiences: regarding both aspects, they experience not sharing the Eucharist as a disruption of the inner logic, discontinuity, and, plainly, as “absurd,” to use the language of Brother BF. Drawing this experience into the debate about the place of the Eucharist in the ecumenical process, it is, indeed, like critics of the practice indicate, fruitless to separate sharing the Eucharist from the goal of visible unity. Yet, at the same time, it is equally fruitless to focus solely on the role of the Eucharist as the climax or summit of Christian unity. In the experience of Taizé and Bose, both aspects exist in a fruitful tension which, in itself, offers space for the ecumenical process to unfold. Both communities have inhabited this space for decades now. The testimonies from Taizé, in particular, show how this space enables growth within the community. The monastics experience their own ecumenical process as one of fusion, merging, or coalescing. It is not a logical process of action and reaction but one of gradual convergence. They also indicate that this process depends on trust, first and foremost in God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and, as a consequence, in the Eucharist, the communities of which they are part, and in the guests they receive. Clearly, the basis for sharing the Eucharist within the community is not primarily doctrinal agreement. Rather, the monastics tend to relativize the significance of intellectual reflection and articulation in relation to the lived reality of the common life and the Eucharist.
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