“Lord, teach me the way of your laws;
I shall observe them with care.” (Psalm 119,33)
“But the one who peers into the perfect
law of freedom and perseveres,
and is not a hearer who forgets but a doer who acts,
such a one shall be blessed in what he does.” (James 1, 25)

Dear brothers and sisters, cursillistas all over the world:

May the peace, the life and the joy of our Lord Resurrected be with you!

The Church of Jesus– all of us, therefore – having just celebrated the Easter solemnities, keeps, in this Easter Season, walking through the mankind history. Joyful for the definitive victory of the Crucified over death and sin, redeemed by His precious blood, vitalised by his Resurrection, we renew the commitments of our mission: announcing to the world of the Third Millennium the Good News of our Lord Resurrected: “We saw our Lord. He is alive!” (see John 20,18). Coated by this certainty and conscious of its responsibility, the Cursillo Movement renews its strengths, re-dimension its energies, re-read its charisma and retake its walking towards announcing, through the word and the testimony of its militants in their own environments, the Good News of God’s Kingdom.

It was precisely in this Easter Season that, as if it were the object of a privileged tenderness on God’s part, the CM, through its World Organism, had the grace of being in Rome, namely at the Pontifical Council for the Laity, for the final steps concerning the canonical approval of its Statute. I then wish to comment the meaning of the Statute for the CM as a consequence of its near (God willing) canonical approval.

Received in audience in the morning of April 30, by Monsignor Stanislaw Rilko, secretary of that Dikasterium, by Mr. Guzmán Carriquiry, subsecretary, and by the canonist, Rev. Miguel Delgado Galindo, the OMCC presented the Statute already revised in accordance with the remarks made by the same Dikasterium at the beginning of the current year. It is impossible to describe in a few words the cordiality, the gentleness, the fraternal opening we were dispensed and guided with, not to mention the words of total confidence, welcome and encouraging hope for the CM, we were addressed by Monsignor Rilko. For those, like myself, who consider a Statute solely as a canonical requirement and, therefore, as cold as the articles of a conduct code, and with no practical use for the Movement life; or for those who believe words and support from the Popes for a Movement’s existence and presence in the Church are enough, the wise words we heard from  Monsignor Rilko opened horizons not yet envisaged. I am thus conveying to you a little of what I could feel in those blessed moments which, I confess, operated in me a “conversion” about the significance and importance of a Statute canonically approved and recognised by the Catholic Church. In a few points I now summarise them, sharing my feelings and conclusions.

1. What a Statute is not:

a) a straitjacket aimed at inhibiting the “freedom of the children of God” and, therefore, at limiting the action of a Movement or any other apostolic initiative;

b) a mere imposition or juridical formality aiming at controlling or fiscalising the CM, obliging it to render explanations of each one of its steps, or of each act of its charisma praxis;

c) a coercive or repressive instrument that imposes penalties to the faulty ones or to the ones who disobey the pastoral orientations of the Church or of the Movement itself;

d) a set of legal principles, good for entertaining experts in canonical law, or the ones who usually “tie up heavy burdens and lay them on people's shoulders, but they will not lift a finger to move them.” (Mathew 23, 4);

e) a “letter that kills” or aborts initiatives, projects, activities or the creativity of the Movement itself.

2. What a Statute is or should be:

a) a “spirit that vivifies”: “for the CM, the canonical recognition might represent a new springtime, a re-taking of its initial enthusiasm, a necessary renovation so that it can adapt to the culture and to the men and women of the Third Millennium” (these are practically the literal words of Monsignor Rilko, during the audience). In such context, it could become like a new creation of he Holy Spirit who, continuously “give life, recreate and renovate the face of the earth”!

b) a starting point and a continuous reference for the fraternal dialogue: a new beginning of a healthy opening, starting from converging points, trying to find out what unites and congregates and minimising what can possibly segregate. The Statute, publicly recognised by the Church will, therefore, be a safe and sound basis for all the instances of the Movement itself.

c) an instrument of communion and solidarity within the CM itself and between the CM and the other ecclesial Movements at planetary level;

d) the comforting certainty that the CM belongs to the Church – institution and communion – as the canonical recognition means visible incarnation in the Mystical Body of Christ;

f) the strengthening of the dimension of the CM as a pilgrim which, once the Statute of its World Organism is approved, will be able to show to the whole world the actual, and central points of its “citizenship” (Paul VI, I World Ultreya, Rome, 1966).

f) a source – both legitimate and legitimated by the Church – for the renovation of the ideas and the mentality, for the review of the processes and for the constant youth of the CM, now and in the future.

Dear brothers and sisters:  in the context of such expectations, in the name of the OMCC, I am asking all the cursillistas worldwide to intensify during this year their prayers, palancas and sacrifices. We are nourished by the absolute certainty that, with God’s Grace, the CM will experience a “new springtime” and will see a kind of re-launching of its charisma and its objectives, becoming the Statute a very strong motivation that will renew our evangelical and ecclesial commitments, especially on these days, when our dear Universal Shepherd, Pope John Paul II, call us to “put out into deep water and lower our nets for a catch”! We are all urged to a new enthusiasm in performing – in communion, in unity and respecting the diversity – the vocation for which we have been called: to go and meet the man, the woman and the culture of the Third Millennium, so as to announce to them the Good News of God’s Kingdom, offering them the option for a new life!

With my fraternal greetings, in the love of Christ Resurrected and under the protection of Mary, the first to resurrect with his Son, I remain as your brother, servant and friend.

Father José Gilberto Beraldo
Ecclesiastic Counsellor