The Role of the Laity at Group & Ultreya

ENKINDLE IN US THE FIRE OF YOUR LOVE: Our Role as Laity at the Group Reunion and Ultreya Greeting. Open with brief explanation of DVD or CD of Msgr. John Esseff’s very powerful talk. He was the Spiritual Directee of Padre Pio and Spiritual Director of Blessed Mother Teresa. As a Meditation, I would like to play a few tracks for you. [Play Track 13, 14, 15 and 16 (total under 12 minutes)] MEDITATION: Ask the audience to close their eyes and listen to audio of Msgr. John Esseff at SCRC talk about how he uses Cursillo to show the love of the Father is those who have no hope. Then, ask the audience,

"Who is the Laity?"

(Wait and listen for responses.) We are the laity. We each have the FIRE of God's love in us. We need to spread that fire and SPARK others with that love. In the Cursillo Manual, the layperson is someone who is sanctified by practicing, with responsibility and conscience, the task of being a person in the Church, using his or her freedom as a point of entry to transform the world according to Christ, bringing LIGHT to the darkness, sacrificing whatever is necessary in order that he or she be truly free, but without the risk of giving up his or her own free will. The layperson is called to be a living testimony of the Gospel in his or her everyday life, by means of RADIATING, GLOWING like an ember, the reality of his or her life in God's Grace in all facets of their life. So the Mission of the Laity is to personify Christ in all circumstances of life. That is to personify, or represent or be Christ to the other, in their square meter, in their environment, as an authentic Christian. Be the LIGHT of the world. You are the LIGHT of the world.

St. Josemaria Escriva, from his homily, "PASSIONATELY Loving the World" wrote this: "Your daily encounter with Christ takes place right where you work, where your aspirations and your affections are. There we must seek sanctity, in the midst of the most material things of the earth, serving God and all humankind. Heaven and earth seem to merge, my daughters and sons, on the horizon. But where they really meet is in your HEART, where you strive for holiness in your everyday lives."

And as Eduardo Bonnin said, "The spirit of Cursillo consists in bringing the essence of the Gospel to the daily lives of many." How do we transform the world for Christ? How do we bring that LIGHT to the darkness? How do we RADIATE God's love in our everyday lives? How can we shine that FIRE of God's love that Msgr. John Esseff expressed that he saw in Padre Pio and Blessed Mother Teresa?

In Cursillo, our tools for transforming the world is through 1) Ultreyas, and 2) Grouping

1) Our Role as LAITY in the ULTREYA. ACTIVITY - hand out piece of paper. Fold paper in half. Then in half again. In one quarter of paper, write down everyone (who has not lived Cursillo) whom you know at work or school. In another corner, everyone you know at home including relatives. Then everyone you know at church. Then everyone else you run into your daily lives. Total the names. Show the effect of doubling the total number. On a larger piece of paper posted on the wall, write down the numbers as they are called out. Then total all numbers. The point of this activity is to show how many people this small group gathered today can affect. The number of people we can invite…. To be a friend, get to know, invite to the Ultreyas, One of the resources from the National Cursillo website, is called "ULTREYA - The Reunion of Group Reunions" In this article, it says that the Postcursillo is designed to facilitate the nurturing of those three essential encounters that took place on the Cursillo so that they grow and develop into true friendship - friendship of the individual with himself, with Christ, and with brothers and sisters. There is no doubt that the key to this process of friendship building is the last encounter - friendship with others. Our role as Laity is to be a friend to the "other" meaning not only to invite those who have not lived Cursillo to an Ultreya, but also to be present to those who have lived Cursillo and have become intimately part of the other's conversion process. When we become a Sponsor for someone, we are their Sponsor for life. And as Pope Francis says, to bring Christ to the margins of society.

It is in the "witnessing" environment of the ULTREYA where those who have just started their conversion process can meet and develop true friendships with other, like-minded people already on the journey. It is essential to the Cursillo method that the ULTREYA remains primarily a kind of meeting place where individuals can go to make new acquaintances, to make and be friends - and develop friendships of the type that will drive, strengthen, direct, and sustain the conversion process and all its unexpected blessings.

The ULTREYA is the gathering of the Friendship Groups - the Reunion of the Group of Reunions. The Groups and their members participate in it for the same reasons they go to the Friendship Group Reunions: to share what everybody (as LAITY) and every Group lives. They do not go there to acquire knowledge nor to receive instructions. They go there to be REIGNITED in the fire of the Holy Spirit.

2) Our Role as LAITY in GROUPING is to be a CHANNEL to help share the type of Christianity which everyone lives, or intends to live. This form of living with others is friendship. To be Christ to the other person. Listening, sharing, praying, “keeping it real”, and helping each other, “check yourself, before you wreck yourself.”

ACTIVITY: This is a friendship activity. Sometimes a nice ice breaker for parties. The point of this activity is to get to know each other better. Friends ask questions, right? So here goes: get together in groups of three. Take turns to tell each other three true things about yourself and one false, in any order. The others in your group have to guess which is false. We have five minutes. [Give example of my three true statements and one false: 1) I had dinner with Ryan Seacrest once; 2) My brother-in law is Matthew Perry; 3) I got this scar from a shark while I was scuba diving in the Barrier Reef; and 4) My boss’s name is Bond, J. Bond. Guess which one is false.] I hope you found out a little more about your friends here in this room. Just imagine how much more exciting, fun, and spirit-filled sharing you can do with the others who are waiting to hear about the love of God from you. Think about those names of people you wrote down in the first activity. (So much work to do, right?) In the booklet, "The Reunion of the Group", it says:

"Reunions of the Group are not made so that there might be people to assist a Cursillo, but Cursillos are made so that there will be people who can make group reunions."

Let me repeat that again. Since no man or woman is an island, and we are called as Christians, or LAITY, to transform our environments for Christ, we can do this through our weekly grouping (or weekly reunion of the group). The reunion, has three parts in which we are called to…….. : 1. To share in the LOVE of God - the acts of Piety, the sacraments, closest moment to Christ, our study which will help continue our formation and persevere in being a saint and apostle 2. To share in the LOVE of neighbor - our Apostolic Success & Apostolic Failure; explaining apostolic failures in the group, & the manner in which they came about, gives to all the testimony of the impossibility of discouragement. It gives a new strength in handling future failures, & new experience in avoiding those we can foresee. As LAITY in the group, we are called to listen & have a supernatural love for our groupies, our brothers and sisters in Christ, without reservations or conditions, just as Christ loved us. 3. To PLAN Christian living together for the coming week - the Apostolic Plan; the plan is never of one person only, it involves all the members. When one acts, the rest form the praying rear guard, so that the responsibility and the idealism become common, shared. As LAITY we are constantly praying for each other. Conclusion. In Pope Francis' Apostolic Exhortation, "The Joy of the Gospel", paragraph 121, he says this:

"All of us are called to mature in our work as evangelized. We want to have better training, a deepening love, and a clearer witness to the Gospel. In this sense, we ought to let others be constantly evangelizing us. But this does not mean that we should postpone the evangelizing mission; rather, each of us should find ways to communicate Jesus wherever we are. (Does that sounds familiar?) all of us are called to offer others an explicit witness to the saving love of The Lord, who despite our imperfections offers us his closeness, his word, and his strength, and gives meaning to our lives. In your heart you know that it is not the same to live without him; what you have come to realize, what has helped you to live and given you hope, is what you also need to communicate to others."

Last ACTIVITY - pass out candles (as visual that they have the physical FIRE) of God's love that needs to shine, glow, burn, light in the darkness. Light candles and turn off lights. To put words into ACTION, as Laity, invite each person to say one name from the piece of paper to include in closing prayer. Open for closing prayer. De Colores!!!