CHAPTER 5: DYNAMICS OF COMMON LIFE AND COMMON EUCHARIST 167 The main thing that I want to highlight here is how Brother TA qualifies the way in which integration into the community, ecumenical growth, and the practice of Eucharistic sharing are interconnected, which he defines as consistent or coherent. This has been very important in his own process towards becoming a monk at Taizé and for understanding what the essence of the community is: “it was a very gradual process of a deeper understanding of what, what here… the brothers live here… um… Indeed, both through study, but still, primarily, for ninety-five percent just through, through daily life here….”399 For TA, sharing the Eucharist has been essential for his own process of growth towards a deeper and more complete unity. Some knowledge is helpful or even necessary, but the socialization process within the community has taken place primarily through active participation. In TA’s experience, this does not exclude the Eucharist. TA indicates that he is grateful for the space that he was given to explore and discover the community life and the richness of the Eucharist, not only through studying it but especially and explicitly through participation. Reflecting on his own process of rapprochement to the Roman Catholic Church, TA adds: I never was an anti-Catholic Protestant, you know, so that… that helps… um… … …. It may be two things in particular, indeed, you know, that would be the first thing, one of the two, indeed, you know, to…… um… to partake…of such a thing, you know, as the Eucharist… … one can only start to love it, you know {laughs}. I mean, so, um and something, something this… important for the Catholic Church… then your love for that church increases as well, you know, or… your bond with that church, the respect for that church… (…) But has got to do with the second, too, that through the people with whom you live together here, I mean, some of my, of my brothers here is Catholic, and I love them as my brothers and I notice how much they received, you know, from the church they come from and how great their love is for the, so, you will, too, you share in that, that’s it.400 Brother TA’s experience is a consequence of Taizé’s lived reality of the exchange of gifts. In his case, the Eucharistic hospitality offered by the Roman Catholic Church has enabled him to gradually discover, understand, and appreciate the mystery of the Eucharist as preserved in the Roman Catholic tradition. His love of the sacrament, of his Catholic brothers, and of the Roman Catholic Church have been sparked and have grown in a mutually 399 TA-1,22. 400 TA-1,30a.
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