On the weekend of August 19-22, 1976, a group of women answered the call and invitation to make the first Cursillo weekend in Grenada at Pope Paul’s camp in St John’s.

The team for this inaugural weekend consisted of Fr George Bardowell of Barbados, as Spiritual Director and Fr Anthony Metcalf of Guyana.

Eleven women from St Vincent, two from Barbados and ten Grenadians made up the rest of the first team. On the following weekend, August 26-29, 38 men became Cursillistas.

Their team was of a similar composition. Sr Catherine Monteil was instrumental in bringing the Movement to our shores and had the blessings of Bishop Sydney Charles, to launch the Movement here.

This year in August 2006, the Movement will be celebrating 30 years of existence and it is our intention to mark this milestone with a number of activities.

During the first ten to fifteen years the Movement was dynamic and Cursillistas were fired up for Christ. Christ was counting on us to live out our Fourth Day and keep the promises we committed ourselves to and we in turn were counting on Him to help us make good our commitment.

We met weekly in group reunions, we visited the sick, we were at the forefront of most activities in our various parishes and we prayed for any and everything we needed prayers for. Attendance at Ultreyas were well over a hundred persons.

You may recall the busloads of cursillistas who attended Ultreyas and Cursillo weekends. Those were the days Ultreya ended with Mass and we paid little heed to time or distance.

In the last fifteen years, our Movement, like so many others in the region has been barely surviving. It has been an uphill task to keep the flame alight.

Thanks though to a core of dedicated cursillistas, or as Fr Gilbert terms it, “the little flock”, we are able to continue the work the Movement embodies. It is our hope that we will attract young and committed persons to serve the Lord and take the Movement forward.

Over the past 30 years we have held approximately 18 weekends and yet our secretariat and schools of leaders consists primarily of cursillistas over 40 years, cursillistas who made their weekends well over 20 years. We are not attracting cursillistas to leadership within the Movement.

When I made my cursillo 28 years ago, the focus was on creating leaders for the Church community and then for the Movement. Today, we are endeavouring to create leadership both for the Movement and the Church, in an effort to sustain and advance the Movement and the work of the Church, not only in Grenada but the region as a whole.

We are on the verge of celebrating 30 years, we have looked back with nostalgia but we also need to look ahead towards the future with hope. We need a new vision for the Movement, especially as we have been entrusted with the leadership of the Regional body for the next two years.

We need more young men and women who would willingly commit and devote themselves and their lives to the service of Christ Jesus and others. We need young blood, young minds that are on fire for Christ.

We are not devoid of young persons who can serve in this capacity, we have them, but we need to encourage and pray for them to come forward to serve.

We need to prayerfully support them, especially when they take initiatives. We must work towards providing training and other opportunities for our younger members to grow and develop themselves to assume leadership positions.

I wish to suggest we consider leadership training courses for cursillistas, that we provide opportunities for them to attend workshops here and in the region and focus on attracting younger persons to make the weekends.

Group reunions

I wish to make a special appeal to all of us to resume our weekly group reunions. This is the main pillar of the Movement, this keeps us together. When we meet and share our work with others, it’s a source of encouragement, grace, inspiration and support for each of us.

When we made our respective weekends we had an experience of true Christian living – there was an abundance of love, prayers, fellowship, joy and laughter.

We need to recapture this spirit of true Christian community through our piety, study and action or Holiness, Formation and Evangelisation. Regular group reunions will assist us in achieving our goal/s.

Let us all resolve to make a special effort to meet in our friendship groups weekly and once more rekindle the flame that burned brightly within us.

God bless you. De Colores!
(Courtesy Grenada Cursillo Newsletter)