Mentality
Mentality
Mentality is the key to explaining the MCC, the irreducible, original and originating nucleus that ultimately identifies it: it is like the initial and direct expression of the charism1. It answers why we are what we are and why we do what we do and how we do it. Everything that is essential to the MCC is pervaded by its mentality2.
In the MCC, mentality can be described as a vital perspective, a way of understanding reality, born of the experience of the charism, freely adopted by those who share that experience and become part of the MCC. It configures a set of criteria, convictions, vital attitudes and faith choices that transform the life of the person, orienting it with a joyful, witnessing and missionary character, which, in friendship, is shared and offered to others3. This is the element that inspired the birth of the MCC, that accompanies its natural and permanent growth and that shapes its identity.
A first element of the MCC mindset is the knowledge and interpretation of reality. In MCC terminology, the “study of the environment”. The starting point, the beginning of the MCC, was the perception of a world that was living with its back turned to God and a life that was no longer Christian. This situation called for a new pastoral response, a new effort to enable every person to live an authentic Christian life and thus to transform a society that had ceased to be Christian. This remains a core element of the mentality of the Cursillo Movement: a clear perception of reality and a concern to give it an adequate evangelising response.
The keys to the response that the MCC wishes to offer lie in a proper understanding of the following concepts, which form the ideological core of the MCC:
- The person, understood in all his or her dignity and with his or her own specificity, capable of God and in need of God in all circumstances.
- The world, understood as the joint human reality that God wants to save, in all its complexity and difficulty.
- God, Father, Son and Spirit, Lord and Saviour. The Love that loves each and every one, that loves and has a plan for the fullness of life for each person.
- The Church, universal sacrament of salvation, people of God and body of Christ, communion and mission, evangelised and evangelising, in which the laity have an essential role.
- Evangelisation, which is the first pastoral priority, in which the preaching of conversion, the Kerygma, the proclamation and the living out of Christian fundamentals is essential.
- Christian life, understood precisely as life, conscious, growing and committed, as a way of being and existing in the world, in permanent conversion, in the normality and everydayness of each day, in community and with responsibility towards others, towards the world.
Purpose
The MCC is an ecclesial movement with a specific purpose, namely in the field of evangelisation1 . It is explicitly defined in the IFMCC3: “to make possible the living and living together of what is Fundamental Christian, helping to discover and realise one’s personal vocation, with respect for it, and thus to promote nuclei of Christians who will leaven their environments with the Gospel”2. In this definition we find the purpose of the Movement, which is made concrete in four aspects:
- To make it possible to live and live together what is fundamental for being a Christian,
- Discovering (and realising) one’s vocation,
- Encourage the creation of Christian groups and
- Gospel fermenting environments.
Each of these four aspects implies the other three. And each one complements the others in such a way that it is only possible to separate them from a theoretical point of view. Because, in the end, they are different facets of the same action: to evangelise. This is the purpose of the MCC, evangelisation, in the specific field of the Kerygma, of the first proclamation, addressing itself primarily (although not exclusively) to those who are far away, in order to make possible an encounter with Christ and thus conversion, which gives rise to a new life, lived in community and committed to the transformation of the world.
One can therefore understand a primary and an ultimate purpose in MCC. The primary purpose is centred on the person, the ultimate purpose on the environments. The aim of the Cursillo Movement is to enable everyone, especially those who are “far away”, to encounter themselves, God and others, and from this threefold encounter to begin a new life (conversion) in their own concrete and personal reality, following their own specific path. This is the meaning of the expression “living the Christian fundamentals”, a personal experience of the basic foundations of Christian life (Christ, grace, faith, the Church, the sacraments). In this first aim of the MCC, an essential dimension is the respect for the personal vocation, the individuality of each person, the desire to enable each person to discover and follow his or her own personal, Christian and ecclesial vocation.
Starting from this first focus of attention, which is the conversion of the person, the ultimate aim of the MCC is the transformation of society, in the words of the definition, the “evangelical leavening of environments”. Logically, these are two absolutely related and interdependent objectives: environments are leavened by the existence of people (and groups) who live coherently their Christian being, that is, who have met the Lord and have committed themselves to his project: the Kingdom of God. The Cursillo Movement aims, first of all, that each person assumes a responsible commitment to his or her own environment, to his or her “square metre”. And furthermore, that there are groups of Christians who, by trying to live Grace in a conscious, growing and shared way, can exercise a transforming action on the different environments of society.
Christian groups or nuclei are an important element for both individuals and environments. The aim of the Cursillo Movement is the existence of Christian groups in which people can share and mature their faith and from which they can act, personally and as a community, in their environments.
