CHAPTER 7: LIVING IN COMMUNION 213 fullness... It's not compromise, it's not negotiation between denominations. Some people think ecumenism is kind of a negotiation. But it's actually fullness that is... our aim. We want the fullness of the mystery, and so... so we, we open up to that fullness wherever it can be found... and so on...That means sometimes saying, oh, maybe I didn't keep uh?... this as much as the other church, and I can learn from that other church, and so on. And if there is that spirit, then… then you are more likely to allow that undivided church to… to arise, no?... ... ....480 Brother BF shares a thought worth mentioning here. He agrees with prioritizing a Christian’s Baptismal identity over his denominational belonging and ties this to a particular interpretation of representation in the celebration of the Eucharist: Personally, I feel that when we can share the Eucharist, uh… we, I receive a sort of encouragement uh… a new hope that it could be possible in my lifetime to see full unity, full visible unity among the churches. Because uh… during the Eucharist we are um… we are made contemporary to the Christ offering his life for his disciples. But uh, in a double sense. Traditionally we think~ we think, we believe that the Christ came~ comes and is present in our celebration, uh, but there is also the other aspect that we are made present to the Last Supper. So, in a sort, it’s, the Eucharist is outside the time. (…) That uh… Christ gives us this power that doing this in memory of him, means that also that we can, we can uh, anticipate this day, uh, and this uh, of course is true for any Eucharist, even if there are not nonCatholics at a Catholic Mass. This truth is the same, I mean. But when you can celebrate with concrete uh… Christian that are not of your own confession, this becomes more clear, more evident, more uh, challenging.481 According to BF, anticipation of future full communion through sharing the Eucharist is not only possible thanks to eschatological hope, but is even more achievable because celebrating the Eucharist unites with Christ during the Paschal mystery two millennia ago, prior to any division. Anticipation, then, is not only looking forward to future full communion but is, rather, a falling back on past full unity. It stresses the notion of restoring unity rather than building it 480 TC-2,6b. 481 BF-1,22a. He speaks of the community’s attempt “to go back, before the divisions” in BF-1,18a as well.
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