GOAL – MENTALITY – STRUCTURE
The GOAL OF THE CURSILLO MOVEMENT is:
By means of friendship, we proclaim the Good News that God loves us, to those who attend a Cursillo Weekend. They come to a Cursillo Weekend to encounter God, self and others, and then to go back to their environments to reveal through their lives the Good News that God loves them.
MENTALITY The living of what is fundamental to being Christian is to know, capture, and understand that God loves us. Therefore, keep it simple, centre it, embody it, and clarify it by living, believing, and witnessing to the Gospel.
- Essence – Cursillos are a lay Movement from the Church. Cursillo has a method that helps to make possible for people to live what is fundamental to being Christian.
- Purpose – The purpose of Cursillo is life itself. Cursillo seeks to create a hunger for God rather than trying to satisfy it.
STRUCTURE OF CURSILLOS IN CHRISTIANITY
We believe that if the Cursillo Movement is given space to live, in its basic structure of: (a) Group Reunion, (b) Ultreya and (c) School of Leaders, it can bring, through its own dynamic, the Good News of the Gospel to all the recesses of human existence, personal, family and social life. Cursillos in Christianity as a Movement are governed by its administrative element, a Diocesan Secretariat comprised of people who respect the guidelines of the Church.
(a) GROUP REUNION Cursillo does not seek for people to assume new commitments, but rather, to accept and give meaning to the commitments which they already have in life. This commitment which originates from life itself, and through living it and sharing it, we wish to convert it, to nothing more and nothing less, into a commitment of friendship. The Group Reunion is a channel for friendship in the conversion process. A friendship with purpose and atmosphere in which we can develop as persons and as Christians. The four important elements are: regularity, seriousness, discretion and sincerity.
(b) ULTREYA – The Ultreya is the act Cursillistas celebrate weekly with less intensity and less intimacy, than the Group Reunion, but with greater diversity and increased possibility in order to admire and encourage each other in our common faith. The Ultreya serves to enhance our Group Reunion and in it the Cursillista seeks to become better by virtue of being better and being with the best. The Ultreya has to be lived and experienced and is not intended to be educational or formative.
(c) SCHOOL OF LEADERS – The School of Leaders is a group of Christians united in an atmosphere of Group Reunion in order to accelerate and give effectiveness to the purpose which Cursillo wants to achieve. The School of Leaders is not a School of Formation, but is intended to be a School of Holiness attempting, in a climate of sincerity and authenticity, that its components are more focused on what is essential in Cursillo and more engaged in the journey of commitment among people and more integrated in the plans that unite them.
LEADERS – Leaders, above all, are those who do not pretend to be. Leaders are those who open themselves each day to the astonishment of a God who loves them and to the admiration of their brothers and sisters.
These may be and are in fact all the people who accept and live, even without knowing, the truths expressed in the essence, purpose and mentality of Cursillos in Christianity.
Presentation by: Juan Aumatell, of the Mallorcan School of Leaders, at the Cursillo of Cursillos in Grande Prairie (June 2017)FULLY ALIVE VOLUME 17 ISSUE 2 NUMBER 77 (for full article)
