OMCC - March 2003

“For this reason, I remind you to stir into flame
the gift of God that you have through the imposition of my hands.
For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice
but rather of power and love and self-control.” (2Timothy, 1, 6-7)

Dear brothers and sisters:

May I remind you that I ended my last Monthly Letter (February 2003) with the following words: “Without doubting or minimising any of the current opinions about ‘charisma’, ‘initial charisma’ or ‘foundational charisma’ – on the contrary,  in order to value them – and taking into account that our principal mission is to search for unity on what is essential for our dear CM, I think we cannot run away from considerations and reflections that contribute to make the evangelising task more agile, either within the CM itself, or as performed by the ones who are committed as  protagonists of the theoretical formulation of its doctrine, or as agents of its effective practice.”

In order to help us progress in our reflections about the charisma, I now convey the testimony of Monsignor Sebastián Gayá, one of the most conspicuous initiators of the Cursillo Movement. In one of his articles – now included in the Cursillos Collection (National Secretariat of Mexico, 2003) – he expresses himself as follows:

“With due respect to other divergent opinions, according to my view of the foundational years, I would synthesise the basic points of the so-called foundational charisma this way:

  1. The proclamation of the fundamentals of the Christian message – the first announcement, the kerygma. In the message one announces there is an essential content, a live substance that can neither be modified nor overlooked without seriously harming the nature of the Evangelisation. (Evangelii Nuntiandi 25).
  2. The Christocentric aspect of the proclamation. There will be no true evangelisation until the name, the doctrine, the life, the promises, the Kingdom and the mystery of Jesus of Nazareth is announced. (Evangelii Nuntiandi 22).
  3. The evangeliser who expounds the message does not do so as a master but as a testimony of his or her own experience of a life of faith. Christ, whose mission we should continue, is the testimony par excellence and the model of the Christian testimony. (Redemptoris Missio 42).
  4. The commitment of basing the proclamation of the message on the doctrine of the Magistery. In the Cursillo Movement, the sensus Ecclesiae is the north that guides, the lever that moves, the light and source that inspires and vitalises (Paul VI, World Ultreya, 28th May, 1966.)
  5. The willingness to help and provoke the change in man’s heart – conversion – so that the faith shapes within him, a new system of life. (John Paul II to the youth in Spain, 3rd November 1982).
  6. The living style which should emerge in all phases of the CM. The contemporary man believes more... the experience than the doctrine, the life and facts than the theory. (Redemptoris Missio 42).
  7. The rejoicing, enthusiastic and hopeful style, in both the explanation of the Message and in all practices of the CM. The Christian man or woman is essentially effusion of the Holy Spirit; he or she is essentially the miracle of Pentecost. And, where the Spirit’s effusion is not seen, the Consoler has not passed through. (Karl Adam, Christ, our brother, page 149).
  8. The flourishing of the mystery of ecclesial communion based, nourished and activated by the friendship in small nuclei, which friendship is founded in spiritual affinities that provide joy and fervour, challenge the imagination and make easier the apostolate that perhaps no one by him or herself would dare to realise. (Paul VI, in the Audience of 6th February, 1968, in Osservatore Romano of 7th February, 1968, referring precisely to the Cursillos in Christianity).
  9. The evangelical leavening of the environments in which God placed each one – family, profession, social relations – in such a way that, when discovering and potentialising his or her personal vocation, the cursillista commit him or herself to incarnate it in his or her temporal realities, by being open to all demands and possibilities contained in his or her Christian being.
  10. The intimate, warm collaboration and the adjustment of the binomial priesthood-laity, without confounding or closing, but discerning the richness of the connection among the several ministries in which the Church finds her complete identity, as a consequence of the solidary complementariness.

I do believe that the above ten postulates could be found in a form or another in “The how and the why”, the first book of Cursillos, the one that was born within the cradle of the Movement itself, when the foundational charisma started to be lived.”

So far I have quoted our dearest Monsignor Gayá. I now invite my possible readers to carry on, seriously and dispassionately, the reflection about such a fundamental issue as  the “foundational charisma”.

My fraternal DE COLORES greetings to our brothers and sisters cursillistas worldwide, with my gratefulness to all those who have already sent their comments and to those who still will certainly do.

From your friend, brother and servant in Jesus Christ, our Lord.

    Father José Gilberto Beraldo
    Ecclesiastic Counsellor