Pope Francis says "It is a great grace to have brothers and friends in faith to support each other and keep alive the love for Christ, the foundation of everything, and to share it with others." to Cursillo Group FULL TEXT
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ADDRESS OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS
TO THE MEMBERS OF THE CURSILLOS OF CHRISTIANITY IN ITALY
Paul VI Hall
TO THE MEMBERS OF THE CURSILLOS OF CHRISTIANITY IN ITALY
Paul VI Hall
(Cursillos is an apostolic movement founded in Majorca, Spain, by a group of laymen in 1944, while they were refining a technique to train pilgrimage Christian leaders.)
Saturday, May 28, 2022
____________________________________
Dear brothers and sisters, good morning, welcome!
With joy I greet all of you, belonging to the Movement of Cursillos of Christianity of Italy, together with the bishops and priests who accompany you, who have gathered here in Rome for your national VII Ultreya.
You use this ancient pilgrim greeting, "ultreya", to indicate the meaning of these gatherings, which have characterized your charism from the very beginning: they are moments of encounter, announcement, witness and prayer, to exhort each other to go " further on ”, to“ go further ”. It is not about organizational meetings, it is not the "board of directors" of a company, but fraternal meetings to rediscover the motivations and the impulse of faith that you have all experienced since the first cursillo in which you participated and which gave a turning point to your life.
Already in your weekly group meetings you take a step "further". In fact, you have the opportunity to go beyond a merely horizontal, earthly and materialistic vision of life, to rediscover each time the new gaze that faith in Christ has given us on everything: on ourselves, on the world, on the meaning of existence. It is easy, in fact - out of laziness, inertia, shyness - to lose the gaze of faith and to conform to the mentality of the world, which extinguishes all zeal and all desire to remain faithful to the Lord and to bring him to others. Now that the pandemic is passing, the admonition of the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us: "Do not desert the meetings [...] but exhort each other" (10:25). It is a great grace to have brothers and friends in faith to support each other and keep alive the love for Christ, the foundation of everything, and to share it with others.
In addition to the weekly meetings, it is above all your "ultreyas" that push you "further". I would like to indicate two fundamental directions for your "going beyond".
The first is going to communion. It is a question of going beyond oneself and beyond one's own group to form community and grow in the Church, which is always a body and never detached, separate members. Therefore, never isolate yourself and never lock yourself up! Always preserve and increase the vital links with the places of communion in which we are inserted.
At a first level, you are called to form community with other groups, at a regional and national level, to enrich yourselves with broader experiences and perspectives, which make you better understand the ecclesial and social situation in which you are immersed and which constitutes the field. concrete of your mission. In this way, faith and life, the Church and the world are unifying in you.
On a second level, you are called to make community with the entire Cursillos movement. The great challenge here is to maintain a spirit of charity and unity, knowing that the founding charism of your movement is the one that was passed on to you by the initiators and the first generation and for which you are all equally responsible. Unity is not based on the charisma of a single individual or on the spiritual "line" of some "current". No, unity is founded on the spiritual heritage accepted by all, lived and shared by all, understood by all and entrusted to all. I know that in the next few days the meeting of the World Organization of the Cursillos de Cristiandad will take place, which will see the participation of leaders from all continents. I hope that this meeting will be experienced as a synodal event of listening and common discernment among those in charge, which gives space to all, which welcomes the different sensitivities and visions, to create spiritual harmony within you. Harmony of identity, of apostolate, of government, so that you can be and show yourselves to others as brothers who act in unity.
On a third, even broader level, there is community with the Church, which implies closeness to and listening to the pastors and participation in the pastoral initiatives of the local Churches in which you live. Your groups and your entire movement, in fact, are not "alongside" the Church, but are also part of the Church that lives in that territory. You are therefore called to identify yourselves fully with the feeling and actions of the Church.
The second fundamental direction of "going beyond", and therefore of every ultreya, is mission. Going further means going on a mission. Your movement too is faced with the challenge of forming communities of missionary disciples who will meet those who are far away (cf. Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii gaudium, 24), overcoming the criterion of "it has always been done this way" (cf. ibid., 33) , which is not a Christian criterion. You have a particular charism, which has led you to rediscover and to be able to announce in a simple and direct way the essential of the Christian experience, that is, God's love for every man and woman. And you know how to convey this announcement within the bonds of friendship and closeness that you establish, without forcing, with the many people you meet, even those with stronger personalities and who seem almost indifferent or even hostile to the faith. I encourage you, therefore, to allow yourselves to be animated by this charism that the Holy Spirit has granted you, in order to experience the sweet joy of evangelizing, in all areas of life, private and public, that is, movement, movement for internal unity and movement to evangelize. .
I would like to add one thing: being on the move also means living the service of Christian proclamation and witness, and this also affects the people who are in charge or responsible for each country or for the whole movement. A bad thing that you must avoid, before it happens - because it seems that it did not happen to you, but I tell you first -: "eternalize" the charges, that is, that it is always the same or the same. Please no. Everyone is good, but not all are indispensable. We are not indispensable. I finish this task of coordinator or coordinator, I don't know what your name is, whether of the group, of the countries or general, I go home, that is, I enter groups like anybody, anybody. "No, but I did this, now it's up to ...". It doesn't touch anything, it's your turn to go home! Understood? And this renewal against personal ambitions, which the devil makes move, is a job to continue living. Because so many movements have died out in the hands of a single or a single manager. We have a lot of experience in the Church. Thus, renewing the service of authority, so to speak, renewing it: no one is eternal in authority.
Dear friends, may the Holy Spirit, through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, always keep you on a journey, never static, on a journey, always ready to "go further", towards communion and towards the mission, and always at the service, not climbers of positions . I cordially bless all of you and your loved ones. And you too, please, don't forget to pray for me. Thank you!
Saturday, May 28, 2022
____________________________________
Dear brothers and sisters, good morning, welcome!
With joy I greet all of you, belonging to the Movement of Cursillos of Christianity of Italy, together with the bishops and priests who accompany you, who have gathered here in Rome for your national VII Ultreya.
You use this ancient pilgrim greeting, "ultreya", to indicate the meaning of these gatherings, which have characterized your charism from the very beginning: they are moments of encounter, announcement, witness and prayer, to exhort each other to go " further on ”, to“ go further ”. It is not about organizational meetings, it is not the "board of directors" of a company, but fraternal meetings to rediscover the motivations and the impulse of faith that you have all experienced since the first cursillo in which you participated and which gave a turning point to your life.
Already in your weekly group meetings you take a step "further". In fact, you have the opportunity to go beyond a merely horizontal, earthly and materialistic vision of life, to rediscover each time the new gaze that faith in Christ has given us on everything: on ourselves, on the world, on the meaning of existence. It is easy, in fact - out of laziness, inertia, shyness - to lose the gaze of faith and to conform to the mentality of the world, which extinguishes all zeal and all desire to remain faithful to the Lord and to bring him to others. Now that the pandemic is passing, the admonition of the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us: "Do not desert the meetings [...] but exhort each other" (10:25). It is a great grace to have brothers and friends in faith to support each other and keep alive the love for Christ, the foundation of everything, and to share it with others.
In addition to the weekly meetings, it is above all your "ultreyas" that push you "further". I would like to indicate two fundamental directions for your "going beyond".
The first is going to communion. It is a question of going beyond oneself and beyond one's own group to form community and grow in the Church, which is always a body and never detached, separate members. Therefore, never isolate yourself and never lock yourself up! Always preserve and increase the vital links with the places of communion in which we are inserted.
At a first level, you are called to form community with other groups, at a regional and national level, to enrich yourselves with broader experiences and perspectives, which make you better understand the ecclesial and social situation in which you are immersed and which constitutes the field. concrete of your mission. In this way, faith and life, the Church and the world are unifying in you.
On a second level, you are called to make community with the entire Cursillos movement. The great challenge here is to maintain a spirit of charity and unity, knowing that the founding charism of your movement is the one that was passed on to you by the initiators and the first generation and for which you are all equally responsible. Unity is not based on the charisma of a single individual or on the spiritual "line" of some "current". No, unity is founded on the spiritual heritage accepted by all, lived and shared by all, understood by all and entrusted to all. I know that in the next few days the meeting of the World Organization of the Cursillos de Cristiandad will take place, which will see the participation of leaders from all continents. I hope that this meeting will be experienced as a synodal event of listening and common discernment among those in charge, which gives space to all, which welcomes the different sensitivities and visions, to create spiritual harmony within you. Harmony of identity, of apostolate, of government, so that you can be and show yourselves to others as brothers who act in unity.
On a third, even broader level, there is community with the Church, which implies closeness to and listening to the pastors and participation in the pastoral initiatives of the local Churches in which you live. Your groups and your entire movement, in fact, are not "alongside" the Church, but are also part of the Church that lives in that territory. You are therefore called to identify yourselves fully with the feeling and actions of the Church.
The second fundamental direction of "going beyond", and therefore of every ultreya, is mission. Going further means going on a mission. Your movement too is faced with the challenge of forming communities of missionary disciples who will meet those who are far away (cf. Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii gaudium, 24), overcoming the criterion of "it has always been done this way" (cf. ibid., 33) , which is not a Christian criterion. You have a particular charism, which has led you to rediscover and to be able to announce in a simple and direct way the essential of the Christian experience, that is, God's love for every man and woman. And you know how to convey this announcement within the bonds of friendship and closeness that you establish, without forcing, with the many people you meet, even those with stronger personalities and who seem almost indifferent or even hostile to the faith. I encourage you, therefore, to allow yourselves to be animated by this charism that the Holy Spirit has granted you, in order to experience the sweet joy of evangelizing, in all areas of life, private and public, that is, movement, movement for internal unity and movement to evangelize. .
I would like to add one thing: being on the move also means living the service of Christian proclamation and witness, and this also affects the people who are in charge or responsible for each country or for the whole movement. A bad thing that you must avoid, before it happens - because it seems that it did not happen to you, but I tell you first -: "eternalize" the charges, that is, that it is always the same or the same. Please no. Everyone is good, but not all are indispensable. We are not indispensable. I finish this task of coordinator or coordinator, I don't know what your name is, whether of the group, of the countries or general, I go home, that is, I enter groups like anybody, anybody. "No, but I did this, now it's up to ...". It doesn't touch anything, it's your turn to go home! Understood? And this renewal against personal ambitions, which the devil makes move, is a job to continue living. Because so many movements have died out in the hands of a single or a single manager. We have a lot of experience in the Church. Thus, renewing the service of authority, so to speak, renewing it: no one is eternal in authority.
Dear friends, may the Holy Spirit, through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, always keep you on a journey, never static, on a journey, always ready to "go further", towards communion and towards the mission, and always at the service, not climbers of positions . I cordially bless all of you and your loved ones. And you too, please, don't forget to pray for me. Thank you!
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