Friendship in the School of Leaders

(Steve’s talk from the National Encounter)

I lived my Cursillo in October 1994 in the diocese of Tulsa, OK. The next week my sponsor helped me start a friendship group… I’ve been grouping at 6:30 am Mondays with the same men since. I was called to serve the Church through Cursillo and after two years, began attending School of Leaders (SOL). After 2 years of participating in SOL, I served as lay director for 4 years until this January.

 

My calling to serve the Church through Cursillo was affirmed 2 years ago. After many friends suggested I become a Deacon, I talked it over with my wife and spiritual director and was accepted to the Deaconate program. After 2 years of aspirancy, I was asked to write my bishop a letter stating that I had a true calling to serve the Church as a Deacon to move on to candidate status for another 3 years. I was troubled with this decision and turned to my family, friends, priests, deacons and prayed for discernment. I found peace while at the 2004 Cursillo National Encounter surrounded by Cursillistas and learning about the foundational charisms of Cursillo.  I also discovered that the first Cursillo in US was held May 24, 1957 in Waco, TX… that was the day I was born!  My primary apostolate is service through Cursillo.

 

I am the chairperson of the School of Leaders for our diocese. In preparation for this talk I asked my friends in the School to give me their thoughts about the topic ‘Friendship’ and how it relates to the School of Leaders … They said:

8    We start with Leaders Prayer, it sets the tone for SOL; one of friendship, charity, service

8    In Leaders Group Reunion – we share our service with others

8    We Witness – we offer Palanca – we Serve as Friends in Christ

8    Personal acceptance of each other

8    Commitment and Accountability to each other

8    SOL reminds me of the song that goes: friends are friends together as long as Christ is the Lord of them

8    Community more important than self

8    SOL – one mentality or thinking just like close friends, like a school of fish swimming together

8    Close bonds of relationship

8    Each time I come to SOL I am reminded how much we need each other

8    There is a strong Human need for friendship … that’s what makes Cursillo so effective

8    We are such a diverse group of people, only God could have brought us together, we offer our time and talents toward service to the community

8    We share our relationship with God and each other

8    Regularity and time builds and develops friendship, activities of service for good of movement

8    We are Family – brothers and sisters in Christ

8    Making sacrifices for the sake of others

8    My soul leaps when we meet

8    SOL is about Service – Love – Friendship

8    Open and flowing communications

8    We have mission and purpose … we work together

8    Our Friend Jesus asked us to do something for him – be a leader/servant of the movement

8    Consult and support with our friends

8    Learn about the movement and teachings of Church with our friends

8    Pray for our friends with our friends

8    Prayer in front of Blessed Sacrament – finish SOL WITH our friend Jesus – we adore Him

 

I would just like to add one thing to these beautiful comments - if you asked me who my friends are … they are my Cursillo small group reunion and SOL; I love them dearly - individually and collectively as a group.

 

John 15: 11-15 contains many of the elements found in our Leaders Prayer – “These things have I spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slave, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made know to you.”

 

One of the young priests in our diocese who has been a spiritual director on several of our weekends and in our School of Leaders has been known to pose these questions to us: 

Do you have a best friend?

Who is your best friend?

Who wants to be your friend?

 

God of course wants to be our friend … but how does he do this? Through others. We come to know him, love him and serve him thru others. This can be done in the School of Leaders.  We must first come to know our self; we do this through conversation with our friends and meaningful conversation with God. It takes honesty with God, self and others to be a good friend.  To be Christian means to accept who we are, to be a friend with self, Christ and others.

 

If we want to be friends with God… we must value what God values…because friends care about what is important to their friends What does God care about most? The redemption of His people, lost children found… that’s why he sent His son Jesus to earth, to reveal Himself to us - to save us so that we can spend eternity with Him in His love. The dearest thing to God is His Son and His people. So to be friends with God we must care about all the people he puts in our path and share our friend God with them.

 

We must desire friendship with God more than anything else. We are as close to God as we choose to be. Intimate friendship with God is a choice, not an accident. James 4:8 “Draw close to God and God will draw close to you.”  We get help from our friends in our group reunion, Ultreya and our SOL to draw close to God.  Friendship with God is literally an awe-some reality. It is an unmerited gift. It should be approached with the appropriate sentiments of reverence, thanksgiving, and wondrous joy.  

 

What is true Friendship?

According to the book – Friendship: the Art of Happiness, true friendship is: “To desire and pursue the good of another and live the good life of virtue together.”

 

Our friendships are shaped by our environments and where we are in life.  We understand ourselves, Christ, and others through deep, meaningful friendships. Through these friendships we begin to understand the essence and effectiveness of Cursillo.

 

1. Cursillo strategy – “make a friend, be a friend, bring a friend to Christ.”

 

2. Friendship Group reunion – sharing with others… friends, becomes a supernatural friendship in Christ… we invite the Holy Spirit to join our conversation. Our union with Christ – PIETY, our STUDY of self, scripture and teaching of the Church; our ACTION  to share good news with our friends.

 

3. Servants become friends … Jesus served others … he calls some of us to serve the Cursillo movement and community in the School of Leaders.  I experienced this service and friendship of the SOL earlier this year. Our diocese has been trying to start a Spanish Cursillo for several years. Through friendships developed at National and Regional Encounters I asked these bilingual friends to help get us started…in March, men from  Laredo, Texas and women from Dallas, Texas traveled to Oklahoma and worked with both English and Spanish leaders from our SOL and helped us have the first men’s and women’s Spanish Cursillo weekends in our diocese. During these weekends an incredible bond of friendship developed through service and love for others and the Cursillo movement. I worked kitchen and don’t even speak Spanish. The kitchen crew was invited to skits and posters, we dressed up in sombreros and sang DeColores in Spanish.  There were no language barriers; it was a common language of  service and love.

 

The School of Leaders takes friendship and understanding and creates one mentality. We have made several changes over the past few years in our diocese. We had Victor Lugo come to our diocese in April for a 4th Day retreat to help with formation and understanding of our community. He said something very important… to focus on the why versus so much the how we serve Cursillo. This has really helped us. One year ago we made the decision in our diocese to NOT schedule a date for weekends until we have the candidate applications. We were finding that we would have a small number of applications a week or two prior, then put out the word and full court press and push our “friends” to commit for weekend.

 

Why wait?  To ferment the friendship and have a true friendship established before bringing that friend to Christ in the Cursillo. It has been one year, we have not had an English weekend but we stay committed and persevere despite pressure and grumblings. (Editor’s note: this drew strong applause and support from the 650 Cursillistas in attendance and just a few 1:1 comments of doubt.)

 

Intimate knowledge about friends means knowing someone from the skin inward … the inner person. Friendships are shared. We share with each other - simple everyday tasks and situations.  Joy and happiness ferments in open and honest conversation. The conversation before, during and after our SOL is joyful and sincere. Life and Christianity is being lived in the SOL --- just as friendship is lived with others.


Someone out there needs you … God will put them in your path … God needs us; our actions, our environments … to work miracles through us. The Lord places us to be used…to lift others up, to talk to them, to share, to bring them closer to Him. Lord, help us live our 4th day in the world where you place us!

 

Eduardo Bonnin speaks about Friendship in the book 1st Conversations of Cala Figuera which our School of Leaders studied:

BE A FRIEND WITH ONESELF AND BE A FRIEND WITH CHRIST

8    Friendship is the essence of Christian Living

 

Friendship with SELF AND CHRIST enables us to share Friendship with others. He (God) became like us to make himself our friend. He is the prototype of true friendship; He sacrifices himself to show us what true friendship is. Eduardo goes on to say… He showed us clearly and demonstrated the highest height to which friendship can reach; to give ones life for the person that you love, (sound familiar from scripture and within the Leaders Prayer?)

 

Friendship, nourished in Christ, becomes a supernatural friendship… sound Eucharistic?  Eucharist is a sacrament of unity. It bonds friendships together thru Grace. When we finish our SOL in prayer/adoration in front of Blessed Sacrament our community is united.  Community + Union = Communion

 

Friendship is:

Ø       Sharing

Ø       Trusting

Ø       Authentic

Ø       Knowing someone intimately; the essence of the inner person

Ø       Being Loved and Loving

Ø       Joy and aging together

Ø       Open Communication

Ø       Fermentation of the Spirit of Christ

Ø       Sincere

Ø       Without agenda

Ø       Mutual respect and discovery of each other

 

Eduardo said: The most important thing to understand is that our friendship with Jesus must be visible in our friendship with others. It is this kind of friendship that has the creative power necessary to transform the world as Christian men and women acting as leaven in their environments. This is without doubt possible if we make the decision to begin with ourselves.

 

So let me ask you again…Who are your friends? Do you desire and pursue the good of your friends and live the Christian life with them?

 

Our Lord has extended a call to friendship. What do friends do? They share their lives! That is what we experience in the Cursillo in community… reunion, Ultreya and School of Leaders.

Who is your best friend?

 

The Cursillo method enables us to have Christian friends and live a fully Christian life… That’s you, that’s me, that’s us! We become a “Walking Tripod” – living a life of Grace until we are with our “best friend” …Jesus… in heaven for eternity.

 

What will be your ‘message of joy’ that you take back to your friends/fellow Cursillistas as you return to your diocese and the environments where God places you? 

 

We have the strategy: Make a friend, be a friend, bring a friend to Christ.

 

We have the means: Friendship – Group Reunions, Ultreyas, School of Leaders.

 

We have the messages…Be His messenger of Joy!  DeColores.