230 PART TWO: AN EMPIRICAL ACCOUNT sacrament if one takes weeks to prepare for celebrating it.502 Still, TA felt he benefitted more from the more frequent practice of Taizé. Brother BF similarly reflects: There are two, even for a Roman Catholic, there are two ways to underline the central importance of the Eucharist in your life. One is saying, and that was the normal way, at least until a few decades ago, for every Roman Catholic faithful, it’s so importance to have the Eucharist, the Mass, it’s so important that I cannot live one day without. And the other one is, it's so important that I cannot have the Mass as a… a daily activity, but I have to consecrate time, feeling, desires towards the central Eucharist on Sunday.503 Looking back at serving as an altar boy in the daily pre-conciliar liturgy, he says: “the danger of routine is always… is always there….”504 He appreciates the practice of the community of Bose, which has found a middle way by celebrating Mass on Thursdays and Sundays as a fruit of the ecumenical dialogue within the community. He did not perceive this as a negotiation of habits but as a common search for the meaning and significance of the Eucharist: And it’s not a question of saying, well, the Reformed celebrate four years~ four times a year, we celebrate 365 a year, so we can find a fiftytwo, fifty~ {both laugh}. No, but, say, which is the meaning of celebrating the Eucharist. And which was at the beginning of the… Christian life, especially in a non-Christian situation, like it becomes to arrive in our Europe, um… what is the meaning to reserve to the Eucharist the central place in the week. And the, to consecrate to the Eucharist the whole um… day of the Lord.505 Brother BE adds that their rhythm resembles the practice of the early church: The fact that the Eucharist is not celebrated each day, or, and so on, but we have it, together, once, so on Sunday, of course and once a week, in order to have also this more ecumenical rhythm and to remember this weekly rhythm, which is also the rhythm of the old, of the ancient church.506 502 TA-1,10. 503 BF-1,18b. 504 BF-1,18c. 505 BF-1,18b. 506 BE-1,22.
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