Cursillo is Changing! - Catholic Diocese of Lexington

DIOCESE OF LEXINGTON CURSILLO NEWSLETTER
Apr-May 07
Cursillo is Changing!
As part of Pope John Paul II’s call to
every movement of the church to return to
their original charism, the Cursillo
movement in the
INSIDE THIS ISSUE. . . United States has
been studying our
primary focus and
• Changes - What Goes
Around, Comes Around charism over the
• Women’s Talks, Times
past several years.
& Closing
We are now
• Faith At Work
entering into a
• It’s Palanca Time!
country wide
• Hope Does Not
updating of our
Disappoint
documents
(Leaders Manuals,
Cursillo Weekend Manuals, and everything
else) and our weekends to reflect the results
of this study.
The primary spiritual change taking
place is a stronger focus on personal and
ongoing conversion (of each Cursillista) as
opposed to a focus on our communities and
our outreach or evangelization. The Cursillo
movement still intends to change and reform
the world for Christ. Our method to do this
is to convert each person into a truer
apostle and lead us all to understand what
God would have us do in our daily lives.
This includes spreading the Word (sometimes by our words, always by our
example). I think the change recognizes
that our outer mission will happen more
easily when our inner conversion continues, while this
outer mission
is not
guaranteed if
the inner
conversion is
ignored. You
should see
increased
emphasis on
our prayer life
from our documents and our communications, as well as an ongoing emphasis on
“making a friend, being a friend, and
bringing our friend to Christ”.
The outward sign of the changes for us is
cont’d on page 5
Christ is Counting on You!
Group Reunion • Ultreya • Environments • Sponsorship • Perseverence
Greetings from Women’s Team #49!
We are enjoying our time together and
working hard on all the preparations for the
weekend. Along with writing our talks
(called “Rollos” in the new manual to
remind us that we are really unrolling one
talk), we are focused on becoming friends
in Christ and building a community of love
that will welcome our Babe Chicks.
As you know we will be the first women’s
team to use the new Cursillo manual. This
means that we will be going back to the old
tripod of Piety, Study, and Action (instead of
Holiness, Formation, and Evangelization).
We will also add back the Sunday Rollo “The
Cursillista beyond the Cursillo” as a lead-in
to “Total Security” (aka “Group Reunion
and Ultreya”). Our Cursillo weekend
happens to occur on Derby weekend, so
we’ll be sure to have fun with that while
celebrating our Joy in the Lord on Saturday.
We have chosen Ephesians 3:17:
“Rooted
grounded
in love”from
as ourpage 1
Lay and
Directors
- cont’d
theme. Our prayer is that we will, through
Grace, be rooted and grounded in the love
of Christ and that his presence with us and
the candidates will feed and support us
throughout our preparations and the
weekend itself. May Christ’s love be the
foundation for our Babe Chicks throughout
their 4th Day.
“To Be Your Bread” is our song. As
we sing it together, we will be bringing
“our lives as they are” to the Lord’s table,
and asking him to “come and change us to be a sign of his love.” This song is a
wonderful reminder of the power of the
Eucharist to change us for the better Christ working in and through our
brokenness, blessing us so that we may
share ourselves and Christ’s love in our
environments.
We humbly ask for your prayers and
palanca for us and for the candidates that
God will send to the weekend. Please
also remember to reach out and include
the Babe Chicks in Group Reunion and
Ultreya. They will be looking for a way to
connect in with our loving community
and your openness and love will enable
them to continue to grow in their 4th Day!
De Colores! Teresa Nolet
Page 2
It’s not too late for palanca!
The Women’s weekend is quickly
approaching and we need Palanca letters for
the team and candidates. I know you’ve been
doing palanca for the success of their
weekend so now all you need to do is tell the
team and candidates about it. And if you
haven’t done any palanca, it’s not too late!
You may mail your Palanca notes to me at
1685 Chandler Ln., Lexington KY 40504 or
e-mail them to me at [email protected].
If you mail them to me at home, please be
sure they are in the mail no later than
Monday so I will be sure to receive them
and get them down to Cliffview by Thursday.
If you want to write personal palanca,
you can get a list of the team and candidates
here: www.rc.net/lexington/cursillo/
spring2007weekends.html#Women
Please make sure to write the person’s
name on the front of the envelope. It’s also
helpful if you write if this person is a
candidate or team member. If you are the
sponsor of a candidate, please indicate this
on the front of the envelope. This will
really help out the team when they are
sorting through the Palanca letters.
Remember what a powerful impact
Palanca had on you when you were on
your weekend. Please take a few minutes
to think about what you can do to help our
Cursillo be as successful as it can!
De Colores, Karen Fister
Women’s #49 Talks & Times
Fr. Paul Prabell (Sp. Dir.) ...... Habitual Grace (Fri. - 10:10am)
............................................. Sacraments (Sat. - 9:20am) ..................... Christ the King
Fr. Pat Steward (Sp. Dir.) ........ Actual Grace/Faith (Fri. - 1:30pm)
............................................. Obstacle to a Life of Grace (Sat. - 2:55pm)
............................................. Life in Grace (Sun. - 9:05am) .................Good Shepherd
Julie Johnson ......................... Ideals (Fri. - 9:15am) .................................. Holy Family
Barb Ross .............................. Layperson in the Church (Fri. - 11:10am) ..... Holy Family
Kim Kovarik (Asst.) ................ Piety (Fri. - 3:00pm) ................................... Mary Queen
Eileen Lewandowski ............... Study (Sat. - 8:20am) .................................... St. Michael
Bobbie Newman .................... Action (Sat. - 1:15pm) ............................ Christ the King
Lastenia Fraley ....................... Leaders (Sat. - 4:10pm) .......................... Christ the King
Diane Monahan ..................... Study of the Environment (Sun. - 8:05am) ... Mary Queen
Mary Jo Enderle (Cha-Cha) .... Christianity in Action (Sun. - 11:15am) ..Sts. Peter & Paul
Kabby Akers (Backup) ............ The Cursillista Beyond Cursillo (Sun. 12:50pm) Mary Queen
Teresa Nolet (Rector) ............ Preliminary Rollo (Thurs. 7:45pm)
............................................. Total Security (Sun. - 1:35pm) ............. Sts. Peter & Paul
Page 3
How faith plays a role in my life
God is always at work in my life and
once in awhile, I am blessed with the
knowledge about where God is guiding me
precisely when it’s happening.
So it was in the summer of 2005. As a
longtime freelance writer who yearned to
have more time to work on my fiction, I
applied for a summer artist-in-residence
grant from the Kentucky
Foundation for Women. A few
weeks after applying, I received
the call that I had been chosen
and would have the opportunity
to spend a week at their retreat
– Hopscotch House – exploring
the idea I had proposed. It felt
like such a success to me that it
was almost as if I had already
been offered a contract to
publish the book. The summer
was beginning to look very
good!
Then I received an e-mail
message from an editor
who I had never met
asking if I might be interested in discussing
the possibility of working on a book for her
publishing company. The editor was Laurie
Delgatto of St. Mary’s Press and those e-mail
exchanges prompted me to think about the
possibility of writing my first nonfiction
book.
The next thing that happened didn’t get
marked in the column of good news for the
summer. I was diagnosed with breast cancer.
It came as such a shock that everything
seemed slightly unreal for a few days. And
there wasn’t much time to re-establish any
sort of reality before they were wheeling me
into surgery. The post-surgery news was
surprising. The tumor had been very large
and fast growing, but it hadn’t
spread into the lymph nodes.
Nonetheless, I would likely
need chemotherapy and
radiation.
My week at Hopscotch House
was scheduled for 10 days after
surgery. The surgeon assured me it
would be a positive thing for me to do,
so I embraced the opportunity with
enthusiasm and packed up my notes
and laptop for the trip. I could deal
with oncologists and further tests
when I returned.
I also had to consider this
book I might still have the
opportunity to write
for St. Mary’s Press. I
called a fellow
Catholic journalist who had been through
breast cancer treatment and asked her –
am I crazy for thinking I can write a book
while going through chemotherapy? She
assured me I wasn’t crazy. As I prayed to see
God’s will in this situation, it seemed that I
could not only do it, but it’s where God was
leading me. What could be more affirming
and uplifting while going through chemotherapy than to hear stories people had to
Page 4
tell about their faith?
And so I wrote. I researched my novel idea
at Hopscotch House then proceeded to
begin writing. When I returned home, I
exchanged more e-mail messages with
Laurie in between appointments with
oncologists and machines that tested me for
various cancer-related consequences. At the
end of August, I began chemotherapy. In
September, I began interviewing people for
Yes! I am Catholic.
My task was to write a book for teenagers
that includes stories about why people
choose to be Catholic. Since the first
audience I had ever felt drawn to writing for
was teenagers, the project seemed a
response to a long-forgotten desire. As I
heard from people who experienced their
own heartaches, physical challenges and
spiritual highs and lows, I knew the project
was an answer not only the prayers of the
editors who conceived it but also to my
prayers for guidance in this phase of my
life.
I finished the most intensive part of the
chemotherapy in January 2006. After a
short break I moved onto the radiation as I
also finished up the last of the 39 interviews. By June, I was down to an easier-tohandle chemotherapy every three weeks
and the draft of the book was finished. Not
long after that, I completed my final
revisions and put the project in the hands of
the good people at St. Mary’s Press.
They tell me I’ll see the book in September of this year. I’ll keep you up-to-date as
that month nears. And in the meantime, I
hope you, too, will be open to where God is
guiding you in your life.
De Colores! Beth Dotson-Brown
Lay Director: cont’d from page 1
a return to the original Cursillo tripod
of Piety, Study, and Action from our
more recent Holiness, Formation, and
Evangelization. There has been a huge
amount of discussion on this at the
national and regional levels, but to me
the reasoning is simple. The old words
better reflect what I myself must do in
order to change my life and become a
better apostle for Christ. Many of the
weekend talks have changed in both
title and content as a result of this
renewal. Joe Lerza and Teresa Nolet
have graciously volunteered to be the
first users of the new Cursillo Manual,
and their teams and candidates will
experience the change. The new
babechicks will not recognize any
difference. It will fall to us veterans to
change in order to support them in
their Fourth Day, and to continue to
learn and grow in the Cursillo movement.
If you are interested in learning
more about the changes, please contact
me ([email protected]). You can
also read more at the National Cursillo
website (www.natl-cursillo.org) or
order one of the new Leader’s Manuals
from Kim Kovarich ($15 from Kim at
[email protected] or 2125
Rollingdale Rd., Lexington KY 40513).
Page 5
Having just traveled through the 40 days
of Lent to the triumph of Easter, we must
continually remind ourselves that we are a
people of HOPE! Being
hopeful, does not mean that
everything will turn out for our
benefit! Being a person of
HOPE, means that whatever
happens in life, something
good will come out of it. John
Paul II wrote: “We cannot live
without hope. Many hopes go
down when they crash against
the rocks of life. However,
Christian hope “does not disappoint,”
because it is based on the solid foundation
of faith in the love of God revealed in Christ.
It seems that with every upcoming
registration, we are plagued with cries,
sometimes panic, for occupants to fill the
slots for our upcoming cursillo weekends.
Instead of cries and panic, I suggest
prayerful hope and confidence that GOD is
working with us and that God is among us.
In the ups and downs of life, we
must constantly be reminded
that God never promised us
everything we wanted; God
promised us everything we
NEED. As you journey this
Easter Season, look back in
your life and in your life’s
journey — has God ever failed
you? Has God ever disappeared? Has God ever gone
back on a promise of HIS? Regardless of
who you are or where you are, the answer
to these questions are NO.
As we continue in our 4th day, may we be
reminded that our 4th day should be
EVERYDAY! Wishing you peace and
blessings! FR. JIM
Cursillo Reunion and Grand Ultreya
August 3 - 5 at Cliffview
Diocese of Lexington Cursillo Secretariat
Lay Director
Spiritual Advisor
Pre-Cursillo
Cursillo
Post-Cursillo
Palanca
Secretaries
Leaders School
Treasurer
Dan Nolet
Fr. Jim Sichko
Nick Maddage
Kim Kovarik
Dan & Donna Connell
Karen Fister
Rick & JoAnn McQueen
Ann Hoenscheid
Lastenia Fraley
Page 6
Sts. Peter & Paul
St. Mark
St. Mildred
Mary Queen
Jesus Our Savior
Holy Spirit
Jesus Our Savior
Holy Spirit
Christ The King
(859) 236-9164
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(606) 561-0554
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Page 7