The Three Encounters

By Brian Pusateri | March 13, 2012 | | Share on Facebook

On a Cursillo 3 day experience and the other similar 3 day experiences, we are led by daily meditations and talks to havethree uniqueencounters, one each on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I would suggest that we should be having these same encounters now during Lent. Whether or not you have made a Cursillo or similar Christian experience, these three encounters are still vitally important.

On Friday, we are challenged to slow down, detach somewhat from our everyday busy life and to take time to know ourselves better. We call this an Encounter with Our Self. We contemplate the big questions of life: Who am I? What is the purpose of my existence? Am I proud of the life I have lived up to this point? We review in our minds the times we have failed to live as we know we should. Through the various talks on that first day, we come to better understand our role in God’s plan. We realize the importance of Pietyand the constant importance of communicating with God. Usually we end this first day with a hunger to be a different person than the me who showed up at the beginning of the day.

On day two we experience an Encounter with Christ. As we meditate on the person of Christ and we listen to the talks of the day, we begin to experience the Christ who is real and alive. We experience a Christ who wants to be our friend and our brother. This day challenges us to Studyand grow in our knowledge of who Jesus is. Day two concludes with us having a feeling that we are loved by the Father, that we are God’s child, and that we are never alone!

Day three we experience an Encounter with Others. On this day we have a deep revelation that we are called to be apostles. This day leads us to experience friendship with others as we are made aware of God’s plan for us to lead others to him. We are made more aware of our call to Apostolic Action. We learn we should talk to God about others before we talk to others about God.

We learn through these three encounters and through piety, study and action that we can help others live a more authentic Christian life. Now we realize that by responding to God’s call in our life and through our actions with others we canleaven all of our daily environments with the Gospel and change the world for God.

Lent really causes us to have these same three encounters. As we reflect on our lives as they have been and as we commit ourselves to redirect towards God’s calling in our life, we can help to bring others to a personal relationship with our Lord. Wecan sustain our Lenten commitments by our commitment to meet weekly with other Christians. In these weekly gatherings and our reflections on our piety, study and action we can helpeach other carry out their personal plan to be the person God called them to be.

In conclusion, even if you have not yet experienced a Cursillo like weekend, or maybe you never will, you can still make the time here during Lent to have these same three encounters. Then together we can follow our Lord’s calling tobeHis apostles.

Brian Pusateri
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