CHAPTER 8: POSITIONING OF THE EUCHARIST 229 8 POSITIONING OF THE EUCHARIST inally, the respondents address the position of the Eucharist in their spiritual routine as well as in their theological and ecclesiological frameworks. This positioning uncovers their view on the fundamental questions underpinning the debate on Eucharistic sharing in ecumenical contexts: How do the Eucharist as source for unity and its function of expressing unity relate to one another? And how does the Eucharist itself relate to the divided churches? 8.1 FOCAL POINT OF A WIDER LITURGY AND LIFE Eucharist as the culmination of communal liturgical life The monastics attribute a fundamental and central significance to the Eucharist in the life of the church. However, they point at two different ways in which this conviction takes shape. In a way, the diverging practices of Taizé and Bose represent two approaches. Brother TA summarizes: “some people celebrate it often, the Eucharist, because it is so precious to them, because it is so holy so you should do it often, others do it only now and then, because it is so holy, because it is something so important.”501 TA himself attests that he was not used to celebrating the Lord’s Supper often in his childhood. His Protestant congregation in the Netherlands celebrated it only four or five times a year. For him, this proved to be too infrequent to grow an intimate familiarity with the sacrament, but he learned to appreciate the reasoning underpinning it while reading about the practice of American Mennonites. He realized that it demonstrates great respect for the 501 TA-1,10. F
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