234 PART TWO: AN EMPIRICAL ACCOUNT and of their common life. This implies two things. On the one hand, they recognize the Eucharist as the focal point of their liturgical practices and communal life. The entire week’s liturgy is directed towards the Eucharist in which it culminates. On the other hand, however, they do not want the sacrament to overshadow the other aspects of faith. This is reflected in the actual practice of the communities. In Bose, the Eucharist is celebrated on Sundays and on Thursdays or important feast days. This frequency was deliberately chosen, taking the needs and theological views of the members from different denominational backgrounds into account. In Taizé, the Eucharist may be celebrated each morning, but it is not part of the daily rhythm of the monastics, who receive Communion during the morning prayer alongside their guests. 8.2 “DO WE HAVE TWO EUCHARISTS?” Brother TC formulates the pivotal question that I have used as the header for this section, inspired by Brother Roger’s response to the first Catholic joining the community in the late 1960s. TC wonders: “Do we have two Eucharists? Are there two? We are one community, do we have two Eucharists...?”516 When Brother Roger contemplated this question, the Catholic liturgy was the ‘other’, the ‘additional’ form of worship, complementing the community’s Reformed celebration of Holy Supper. Today, the situation is the other way around. TC’s question remains the same: are there two Eucharists, one Catholic, one Reformed? Even though it is mostly a rhetorical question, it is by no means irrelevant. It showcases the community’s struggle to relate the two forms of Eucharist with which it is so deeply familiar and which, for so long, have excluded each other. It makes sense that this question is particularly urgent in Taizé, given its history and composition. Brother TB comments on the same issue. For him, it is important to disentangle the two ways in which the term ‘catholic’ is used: to indicate a particular denominational or confessional entity on the one hand, and a dimension of faith on the other. He then argues: So, when we say, when we use catholic as a confession, and not as, as the... the universal, all compassing reality of the church, which includes everybody, then... um... then... it's not good to combine this with the Eucharist, for me. Because, because, Eucharist, it is the, 516 TC-1,8a.
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