The Pre-Cursillo Process – Part II

By Brian Pusateri | September 29, 2011 | | Share on Facebook

Friends In Christ:

In my first letter on the Pre-Cursillo Process I discussed the fact that as Christians and as Cursillistas we are all called by our baptism to bring Christ to others. I then pointed out that in the Pre-Cursillo Process we are also called to find new evangilizers.

In that search to find new evangelizers, we are told to focus not just on finding individual candidates, but rather to first find environments that need to be brought to Christ.

Furthermore, “indadequate study of the priorities and needs of an environment will result in a defective selection of candidates, and consequently a diminishing of the effectiveness of the Cursillo Movement.”FICM 205

The Leaders’ Manual says on page 86 that “the proper selection of candidates is of utmost importance.” On page 87, we are told to seek out people “whose decisions count, whose opinions carry weight and whose activities exert influence in their environment.”

Our materials clearly tell us that there ar three separate groups:

  1. Those who CAN’Tgo on Cursillo- Non-Catholics, Catholics who are under18 yearsold or Catholics unable to receive the sacraments
  2. Those whoCAN go- All Catholics over 18 and in communion with the Church and able to receive the sacraments
  3. Those who SHOULD go
    1. Those people who will derive the most benefit from it and consequently who will produce the most and best fruit for evangelization because of it
    2. People who are leaders or potential leaders
    3. People who have a dynamic dissatisfaction with the way things are
    4. People capable of being salt, light and leaven of their environment

“To reach the people it hopes to evangelize, the Cursillo Movement needs to identify groups of people that have special qualities causing them to have greater than average repercussions on the behavioral patters of the rest of the community; and it needs to find out who the leaders of these groups are.”FICM 214

The Leaders’ Manual on page page 90 states that while having the “who can go” candidate on a weekend is fine, “we must guard against having these individuals be the majority of the candidates on any given weekend.”

So in summary, we are a movement that has chosen to focus on changing environments. Other movements in the church focus just on the individual. If we want to succeed in Christianizing environments, we must seek out those with the God givencharisms and who have the best likelihood of leading others to Christ.

Questions:

  1. Have I written down a list of the environments God is leading me to change?
  2. Am I actively getting to know the people in these environments to determine who has the ability to lead others to Christ?
  3. Have I engaged these individuals in conversation to determine that they are dissatisfied with their environment not being oriented to Christ? Have I discussed with them why, after prayer, I believe God has led me to them and that they might be a good potential agent for chagne in their environment?
  4. During my weekly friendship group reunion, do I discuss with my group the environments that I am studying and the potential candidates from those environments? Do I seek input and prayers from the group concerning any potential candidates?

Finally, we want to bring Christ to everyone; however, we want to, with prayer, seek out the best candidate to bring to our movement so that we can be highly effective in our purpose to transform all environments for our Lord.

Next week’s letter will be about Cursillo: A Kerygmatic Method

Brian Pusateri
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