CHAPTER 7: LIVING IN COMMUNION 225 Brother BF recalls how his experiences have made him reconsider the meaning of communion. During his stay in the small community in Switzerland, he especially struggled to translate the concept to the concrete relationships with the Christians he met. On the one hand, he felt closely connected to the Protestant pastors with whom he prayed, studied, and exchanged ecclesial concerns. On the other hand, he felt detached from the Catholic parish. At the same time, however, he knows now on an intellectual level that he is in full communion with the latter and not with the former: “that scandal helped me to reflect on another level of being communion. Because, at that time I felt more in communion with Daniel and with some Protestant pastors, than with the local priest and Catholic community.”499 He continues: This obliged me to think about a sort of sentimental or emotional communion, or intellectual communion. So, we are, we agree on a theological idea, we agree on uh… a kind of liturgy, or uh… things or something like that. And what is the real meaning of communion? Because I was in deeper real communion, uh, and full communion with the Roman Catholic Church, in which I was not at my~ at home, and I was not in communion with some of the um… … Reformed communities or pastors, with which I was sentimental, emotionally, intellectually more in communion, mmm? So, this obliged me to have a sort of uh… re-, rereading of what I was supposed to think about communion in the church. What is church? What does mean the term church and communion? And Holy Communion, and Eucharist? Uh… of course, here, this kind of uh… tension, sometimes we [may], I mean, I feel more in communion with the uh…Anglican Church, than with the four cardinals who made the questions to the Pope Francis, so, the problem remains, but they’re far {laughs}. Uh, while being there, I said, but why I have to go, to go to the Roman Catholic Church, where they are not yet Vatican I, but uh… in difficulties with Vatican II, and I find uh, with this pastor I discuss about the Gospel, I, I know their trouble concerning the every Sunday Eucharist, and a lot of things. And I was there, I mean. 500 BF clearly struggles with the theological concept of communion, which clashes with his day-to-day experiences. During the period when Waldensian pastor Brother Daniel presided over the Eucharistic liturgies in Bose, when BF was supposed to join Mass in the Catholic parish church in the village of Magnano, 499 BF-1,12. 500 BF-1,14a.
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