Cursillo, in Spanish means “short course in Christianity.” It is a course which centers on the teachings of Christ. Cursillo includes the Three-Day Weekend that begins around 7:30 p.m. on a Thursday evening. Your sponsor, or co-sponsor, will bring you to the site of the Weekend: currently designated as the Mariandale Retreat Center in Ossining, New York. During the course of the next three days, 15 short talks are given by lay persons and clergy who have spent several months working together carefully planning and preparing for the Weekend. The talks range, for example, from examining our “Ideal” of life, God’s “Grace,” how we as “Laity” support the Church, what we do to exercise our “Faith,” how “Study” helps to a deeper understanding, how the “Sacraments” help express our faith, how we exercise our faith in specific “Actions,” how we can be effective in the “Environments” in which we live and work, what possibilities there are in our “Christian Communities” and how to stay in touch with others familiar with our experience in “Group Reunions.”
The Cursillo weekend is not a retreat. Each day is long and has a variety of planned activities. There are frequent short breaks throughout the weekend. Cursillo begins with a self-reflection period on Thursday evening. After Compline on Thursday night, you will be asked to maintain silence until the next morning, allowing everyone the opportunity to think about and to look inside themselves. This silent period will not be repeated the rest of the weekend.
The weekend is an opportunity for you to meet clergy and laity who are seeking to strengthen, share and grow in their faith. It provides you an opportunity through shared prayer, worship, fellowship, study, laughter, tears and love to experience the reality of the gift of God’s love freely and unconditionally given. Holy Eucharist will be celebrated daily. You will hear five meditations. The three-day part of Cursillo concludes on Sunday late afternoon. Your sponsor will then pick you up and take you home. Why is it called a three-day weekend when it begins on Thursday and ends on Sunday? The Cursillo is like the Hebrew day. The evening and the morning comprise the day (Sunset to Sunset), hence the three days.
For more information email NorthCarolinaCursillo@gmail.com.
Within the greater context of the Christian Church, an institution which has been in existence for two millenia, Cursillo has been a fairly recent movement. And it did not develop by accident. It began when a group of individuals dedicated themselves to bringing others to know Christ better.
The first stirrings of what would later become the Cursillo Movement began during the Second World War on the island of Mallorca, off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean Sea. The end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939 engendered a time of apathy and secular humanism, and even the threat of Communism. As a reaction to these factors, the Cursillo Movement sought to entice the Spanish to shore up the original source of faith ~ the Catholic Church ~ but to do so with a new kind of mentality and spirit.
Initiated by Cursillo founder Eduardo Bonnín Aguiló and continued under the leadership of
Monsignor Juan Hervas, Mallorca’s bishop, special pilgrimages to the Shrine of St. James at
Compostela - in the Spanish region of Galicia - were established for servicemen returning from their tours of duty. These pilgrimages, a precursor to what is now called Cursillo, facilitated their re-entry to civilian life with renewed dedication of life and purpose aimed at the Christian ideal. Even to this day, the intention of Cursillo is to give participants a renewed spirituality and a clearer understanding of how Christ can work through them to change the environments in which they live.
It was on one of these early pilgrimages that the song “De Colores” was written. According to tradition, a bus had broken down while the young men were on their way to the holy shrine. While they were waiting for repairs to be made, they began singing about experiencing God’s hand in all of creation around them - from a virtual kaleidoscope of colors in their idyllic surroundings to the joyous sounds of the rooster, chickens, and even the baby chicks in a nearby yard.
Although shaped and refined through the years, Cursillo came upon a winning formula seemingly from the very beginning. The first Cursillos were held in Mallorcan cottages for friends - inviting primarily those perceived to be born leaders and recruiting among non-practicing as well as practicing Roman Catholics. In addition, each Cursillo led to the formation of small groups which kept meeting afterwards for mutual support in prayer, study, and action. In the 1940s, Cursillos in Msgr. Hervas’ diocese were held at an accelerated pace - as many as 30 per year - and the Movement was given a tremendous boost.
The growth of the Cursillo Movement was like wildfire! As early as 1955 it emigrated to South America and Mexico, and from there spread quickly to 20 Spanish-speaking countries.
The burgeoning Cursillo Movement came to the United States in 1957. Two Spanish Air Cadets
- both Roman Catholic and Cursillistas from Spain - were training at the Lackland U.S. Air Force Base facility in Waco, Texas. They asked the local priest, Father Gabriel Fernández, to help bring Cursillo to the United States. Buoyed by the Cursillistas’ passion and dedication as Christians, Father Gabriel asked his bishop for permission to make his Cursillo and upon receiving approval went to Spain to undertake it. When he returned to Waco, the first Cursillo in the United States was held in Spanish. The English speaking Movement began in San Angelo, Texas in 1961. From there, the Cursillo Movement spread throughout the United States. In 1965, the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican (Vatican II) - in an effort to address the needs of an increasingly modernized global community - formally approved the Cursillo Method and the Cursillo Movement as a whole.
By the 1970s, the Episcopal Church had embraced the movement and gave it an Anglican flavor while retaining all that was fundamental and basic to the original model. In 1971, a group of Episcopalians from the Diocese of West Texas made their Cursillo as guests at a Roman Catholic Cursillo weekend in California and were subsequently invited to Dallas, Texas to form the nucleus of the team for the first Episcopal Cursillo in the United States.
The Cursillo Movement in the Episcopal Diocese of New York held the first weekend in October,
1979 at St. Mary’s School in Peekskill, New York. The original team was composed of a few New York Cursillistas who had made their Cursillo elsewhere, with the bulk of the team being a stalwart group from the Diocese of Rhode Island. The Episcopal Cursillo Movement and Cursillistas quickly grew in numbers, and subsequently the governing body of Secretariat was formed. More than 2,000 candidates have since participated in a New York Episopal Cursillo weekend.
The Cursillo Movement of all dioceses is under the direction of the bishop. In the Episcopal Diocese of New York, the movement has been sustained with the knowledge, consent and blessing of a succession of bishops. We are proud to count Presiding Bishop Michael Curry among our Cursillo faithful.
The New York Episcopal Cursillo has its own style, as does any Cursillo, while maintaining the authenticity of the original movement. The Cursillo Movement, which sometimes is referred to as a lay movement, is in fact a movement of the whole Church. It involves priests, deacons, and laity together as the whole people of God - with a mentality and methodology all its own.
The benefits of Cursillo are immeasurable.
In parish after parish, Cursillistas returning from their weekends add new life to the liturgy, the caring, the learning, and the praying that goes on in their communities and the world at large. The teaching from the weekend guides us for the rest of our Christian lives. First we learn what it is like to live in union with God through a life of piety. Then we nurture that relationship through study and finally we spread that life of grace through apostolic action. These are the elements of Cursillo and the elements of fundamental Christianity upon which all else is built.
So, our aim during this time with you is simple: to be in the company with Christ and to share Him with you. And with God’s help, we can certainly accomplish great things - here this weekend, and in the days to come!