The
Of The
FI Fundamental
Ideas of the Cursillo Movement
LM Leaders Manual
CM Cursillo Manual
-- page 9 {Second Edition 2006}
Good morning. Let us pray;
Lord, grant that we may
understand the necessity for depth in our movement, rather than surface
glory. Convince us of the truth that
colorful programs do not constitute success.
My God, give us a spirit of
self sacrifice so that we may offer everything for Your cause: our time, our
abilities, our health and even our lives if necessary. Instill in us courage in our initiatives,
good judgment in our choice of the right means, and that determination which in
spite of failures assures victory
Move away from us the tiny
rivalries, sensitivities, discourtesies, pride, everything which distracts from
You, everything which divides or discourages.
Help us to maintain at a high
level a meaningful supernatural and mutual charity among ourselves, so that
each one will seek by preference the most humble tasks and will rejoice at the
good performed by others, so that all our spirits united in a common purpose
will have one single spirit, Yours Jesus, and that this spirit may let us see
Your attractive goodness marked in all our faces, Your warm accents in all our
words, and in our lives something superior to the world, something that
proclaims Your Living Presence among us.
Amen.
Our Lady of Guadelupe, Patron
of the
St. Paul, Patron of Cursillo, Pray for us.
This presentation is intended
to help understand the purpose of Team Formation and team particip[ation in
First, let’s define the role
of a leader. All who attend a Cursillo
Weekend become cursillistas. All who
become cursillistas should strive to be Christian leaders within their
environments (home, work, social, political, etc); however, not all
cursillistas will choose, or are called, to become Cursillo Leaders. The worst enemies of a movement are those who
become its promoters without understanding it.
Leadership entails more than
just being on teams for weekends.
Leaders are those who are involved in the whole work of the Movement ‑
the Pre-cursillo, the 3‑Day Cursillo, as well as the Post-cursillo.
Cursillo is a proclamation of
a doctrinal message and presupposes and demands a doctrinal structure a solid
dogmatic base, which will become a foundation for a clear and profound
religious conviction. From this comes a
solid Christian life mixed with theological truth. The proclamation of the message should be
done with simplicity and authenticity.
The message should be a witnessing of Christian life bold enough to
inspire imitation, yet expressed with true humility, giving the glory to God.
Cursillo is based on a
fundamental premise of personal contact.
Personal contact is more than having a chat. It involves listening to determine where others are, and providing them a
truth. This truth is reinforced by the
sharing of the leader's own experience to make the truth concrete.
The leaders' role is to give
a witness that is exemplary in terms of living in grace and using the Cursillo
method.
The
The purpose of the SOL is to
help us – the leaders of the movement continue to growq and learn about the
movement. The SOL should study the
environments available to the Cursillistas and plan the apostolic conversion of
the environments. The SOL trains the
teams. Without the SOL, experience even
oin our own diocese has shown we will quickly loose our proficiency and
understanding of the movement to the extent we will no longer be qualified to
teach its foundations and methods.
The Formation of the Team
The Team is selected in a
manner and time that will facilitate meeting and planning as necessary in
porder to become a living community. The
team will be the leaders for the candidates present on the weekend and must be
properly prepared spiritually and technically with regular attendance to the
Preparation of talks,
presentation critiques, planning of meals, identifying materials needed,
continuing the study of the Christian purpose and how the Cursillo can
facilitate this study. Most of all,
formation provides a mechanism for the team to grow in fellowship with one
another – each appreciating the contribution of others to the Christian
community, the individual witness to others and providing the support and
encouragement to continue and advance the apostolic action of each
individual. Typically formation
activities meet collectively as a large group and also break into smaller more
focused groups with concentrated efforts in specific areas related to
responsibilities for the weekend.
The presenters prepare their
talks using the Cursillo Manual as a guide.
Each presenter’s talk is critiqued by experienced members of the
team. If necessary, corrections are made
and where necessary an additional critique is conducted. It is critical that each talk adhere to the
outlines in the manual since each talk builds on the presentations given
before. Each talk progresses based on
the foundation of the talk before, and each day progresses based on the ideas
presented the day before. The full
impact of Cursillo depends on the progression from one concept to another: talk to talk, day to dayTable auxiliaries are
crucial for the candidates understanding of the ideas presented. Table auxiliaries facilitate and moderate
discussions ensuring each individual has an opportunity to present their
opinions. The candidates as a table
family (decuria) should grow in commraderie and fellowship with one another and
benefit from the sharing of the ideas from each individual. Most often, the collective effort and
contributions of the table family (decuria) provide the best understanding of
the material presented.
The chapel team and Palanca
team often are combined but each has unique tasks. The chapel team is responsible to all aspects
of preparing the chapel for liturgical activities. This includes ensuring the placement and
adornment of a tabernacle, securing paten, ciborium, chalice, cruets, linens, candles,
arrangement of the altar and bible, the bible enthronement in the talk room,
and obtaining or arranging for the priests vestments. They also are responsible with the Palanca
team for being available to pray over each presenter just before they deliver
their talk. The chapel team might also
assist in preparing for meditations. The
Palanca team also assembles, sorts, and distributes both general and personal
Palanca.
Kitchen Team: Kitchen is responsible for planning all meals
including menu selection, purchasing supplies, ensuring availability of
necessary utensils, and of course cooking.
This task includes addressing any specific dietary restrictions any of
the candidates or team members may have.
Music Team: Music is responsible for all music during the
weekend including Liturgical music for mass, Stations of the Cross or Rosary if
desired, blessings before and after meals, music during meditations. Music is responsible for selection,
preparation and leading the community in music including availability of music
resources such as books.
Setups Team: Setups is responsible for ensuring the
facility if prepared for the next activity including the room arrangement, and
availability of any materials. In
addition, before the weekend, they coordinate obtaining all of the published
material s that will be necessary to support the Cursillo, and build and
assemble any take home material that will be provided to the candidates and
team at the end of the weekend.
It is only logical that the
Leaders should be present on a Weekend made by a number of candidates they have
prepared. In this way, the same leaders
who have selected and prepared the candidates continue the conversion
process. The presentations, which are
given on the Weekend, should reflect the type of progressive conversion and
environmental evangelization to which the participants can relate and which
they can imitate. Again, the leaders'
role is primarily one of personal contact with their group of participants on
the Weekend with the plan of continuing the process afterward in the Post-cursillo.
One of the primary functions
of the leaders in the Postcursillo is personal contact with the cursillistas in
the Ultreya and especially maintaining contact with those who are not regular
participants.
The leaders should help new
cursillistas to find friends with whom they can become a permanent group. Leaders create an atmosphere whose sole
purpose is to foster the sharing of Christian life with others.
The person‑to ‑person
proclamation of the Gospel is important.
The Lord often used it (for example, with Nicodemus, Zacchaeus, the
Samaritan woman and Simon the Pharisee), and so did the Apostles. In the long run, is there any better way of
handing on the Gospel than by transmitting to another person your personal
experience of faith?
If religious experience is
personal, we all need individual help: thus one of the main functions common to
the whole Cursillo Weekend team is their openness to personal dialogue and
sharing with the cursillistas.
In such dialogues, we are
trying to construct, build up, and communicate the effective and valid criteria
for a Christian structuring of the person's whole life. This work will extend far beyond the three
days of the Cursillo Weekend.
This personal dialogue and
sharing of the leaders with the cursillistas must be done on the basis of
friendship and sincerity through personal contact. Leaders must be willing to open themselves up
as a friend without trying, diplomatically or craftily, to probe the spiritual
condition of the cursillista.
Only sincere friendship will
offer ways for effective openness and dialogue.
The technique uses opportunity, gentleness and tact, and is carried out
in an apostolic spirit. The leaders make
friends with all, so that each one will become a friend of the Lord. It is a well‑known fact that who says
something, and how it is said is more important than what is being said.
The Cursillo Weekend
team members – and especially the Table Auxiliaries, should spend all of their
free time in personal contact. Weekend
schedules allow sufficient time for this process. There are three stages, or moments, of
effective apostolic personal contact:
¨
to know
¨
to evaluate
¨
to direct
The technique of personal
contact follows the normal development of a Cursillo. This is true for the group as a whole as well
as for the individuals in the group.
While leaders in their
personal contact may discover moral or other problems, this is not their
purpose, and a Spiritual Director should best deal with these issues. The purpose of personal contact is to help
deepen the personal understanding and commitment to "Christian
criteria." These basic principles, which if well understood and grasped,
can direct and orient a person's whole life and serve as the foundation for the
solution of all present or future difficulties.
The teaching techniques of
the Weekend are to help create a climate which will facilitate an encounter
with the Lord. These techniques help to
remove barriers and obstacles that would prevent the message from reaching the
candidate's, mind and heart. They try to
break the bonds which enslave and prevent people from making free and conscious
decisions.
Technique during the Weekend
is simply preparing the way of the Lord.
The order in which doctrines are presented is considered the main aspect
of our teaching method. Technique is the
systematic arrangement of certain truths to achieve a specific purpose.
Among the basic elements of
the Weekend technique, we should emphasize the leader's personal contact with
the candidates. Only when we know the
persons can we know what to say and how to say it.
Sincerity, realism and
courage are necessary in implementing the Weekend technique. The team must be flexible enough to adjust
quickly at each moment of the Weekend.
Technique must be used rationally; each Weekend is different. This requires controlling technique to avoid
being controlled by it.
As a general principle, we
might say that technique boils down to knowledge and awareness of what should
be done on the Weekend and of what ordinarily happens when we responsibly take
care of the details within our control.
This great care is taken so that the candidates may experience a joyous
encounter with Christ, presupposing the action of grace and the individual's
free will. It is important to remember
that although methodology and technique are essential during the Weekend, we
must avoid becoming mere "technicians" and making the technical means
into ends themselves.
The sharing of what is
fundamental for being a Christian is supported in common Eucharistic
living. That is why the Eucharistic
community is fostered as a central theme of the Weekend.
The people of God are led and
invisibly supported by the Spirit of Christ, but they should also form a true,
visible family. It has to bring to life
what was experienced in the early Christian community when all were one in mind
and heart. Within the Catholic
community, small communities gather around the Eucharistic table to experience
unity and communicate this unity of love.
Visits to the Blessed Sacrament,
within the framework of the Weekend, are of great spiritual and teaching
value. Being spontaneous and shared,
they promote the common unity of all the participants. Visits to the Blessed Sacrament bring hearts
closer together, and encourage true friendship.
With these visits, praying, sharing and taking as its own one another's
problems solidify the community. Therefore, in these visits we become aware not only of
our closeness to Christ, but also of the community spirit blossoming in the
three days. The leaders in such groups
lead most effectively by example.
In order to facilitate a
spirit of sharing, promote an attitude of community and open the doors of
friendship, the candidates are divided into small groups for which team members
are responsible.
In these groups, the candidates’
dialogue (reunion) on the message proclaimed in each talk and then summarize
each talk. This method provides in‑depth
sharing of the Christian experience, so that the Weekend may help bring about a
progressively mature conversion.
The groups help create an
atmosphere in which the candidates can speak with openness. They verbalize their concerns and exchange
and share experiences with each other.
Normally on the first day the
group is simply a working team; almost certainly by the end of the Weekend it
will be a community of faith and love.
Group
A good Table Auxiliary
(leader) raises questions, keeps the discussion moving on track and relates the
remarks of various participants to each other, to the talk and to previous
discussions and talks.
The Group Reunion basic
objectives are:
To get each individual's
point of view (this facilitates the personal contact work);
To produce a summary of the
talks (the role of the group secretary) for presentation at the Ultreya.
Once these objectives are
reached, the group can disband for free time, allowing each participant to
pray, meditate, be alone, socialize, receive spiritual direction, counseling or
personal contact.
If the Weekend experience is
valid, then it should open up the realistic possibility of continuing this
encounter of self, Christ and one's brothers and sisters in an ongoing way. This possibility is best demonstrated by the
team, which presents the truths of the Cursillo and gave witness to them by
means of their own lifestyle as a community
The team should reflect their
life of holiness, formation and evangelization.
It should be obvious that they are Christian friends and have reached a
stage of Christian community through their commitment to each other to grow in
the Christian life and to share that life together. If the team demonstrates this strength and
love, it should cause the candidates to say to themselves, "I would like
to do likewise." Such a witness should be motivation enough for them to
leave the Cursillo Weekend eager to seek out a group of friends so they too can
grow through participation in Christian community The team on the Weekend is
not so much a team of speakers as it is a team of witnesses to what Group
Reunion means in their own lives.
Each person who experiences
conversion is in need of special understanding and assistance. The leaders, the Spiritual Advisor and the
Christian community are called to help with the ongoing process and
orientation. The matter is serious
because in a certain sense the Lord has put the success of another's spiritual
development into the hands of human beings.
There is no standard procedure to follow because there is no such thing
as a standardized human being, just as there is no standard way to rear a
family or run a society or a Christian community. Each person is unique. Any process of relating must be individual
and personal as we search for effective ways of helping each individual
progress toward full Christian maturity.
In a way, all converts are
kind of "prodigal," far from their Father's house, returning to
reorganize their earlier lives or to start life anew.
287 Whether or not they give talks, the main
function of all the leaders of the Cursillo is to make friends with the
cursillistas, in order to make them friends of Christ. Basically they do this by;
¨
being constantly
at their service;
¨
showing tactful
interest in their problems;
¨
helping them
through any doubts or anxieties they may have;
¨
accompanying them
along the way;
¨
being living
witnesses of the presence of the Lord; and
¨
bringing them
before the Lord in trustful prayer.
288 And so the Cursillo leader must
¨
accept in all
simplicity the trust that the Church has placed in them, and commit themselves
to being transparent signs of the truth they are proclaiming;
¨
know it is their
responsibility to search long and hard for the best ways and the right words to
get at the root of whatever problems each cursillista may be experiencing;
¨
are conscious of
having been chosen to be agents of change, in order to hasten the hour of the
Lord for each cursillista, with due respect for the freedom of each;
¨
are willing to
let themselves be possessed and energized by the Word that they must in some
way proclaim;
¨
find their
strength in frequent visits to the Blessed Sacrament, where prayer makes itself
the weakness of God;
¨
rely on the help
of the Spirit; and
¨
understand that
their whole role can be reduced to one word: service.