I am writing a few lines about the OMCC meeting held a few days ago in Rome. And in haste, I have to say that it has been “a great gift from the Lord”. Yes, it is true that this phrase is one of our clichés and that we often use it to describe many of our encounters, journeys and Cursillos… but it is so! If we use it a lot, it is because we have the privilege, in our Movement, to receive many gifts from the Lord in many moments, in many activities, in many people.
This first meeting of the new OMCC has been a gift in the encounter of people who did not know each other. We have been able to know each other, listen to each other, share illusions and hopes, conform ourselves as a group, work together… and begin to be friends and live together an experience of God and the Church. There were nine of us, some of whom had never even met in person. From very different places, cultures and trajectories in the MCC: Australia to Argentina, Ukraine to the United States, Croatia to Brazil… But we have come together in a common project of service, commitment and confidence in our beloved Movement, in its possibilities of unity, growth and life. With differences, of course. We have moved in that great space that unity in diversity offers us, from mutual respect, welcome and the conviction that we all have something great that unites us and offers us a familiar path.
Seeing how we have been discovering and confirming a starting point, a joint, clear, firm base has been a gift. We emphasised, in the first place, the centrality of God in everything and always: in our own presence in the OMCC, in the initial approaches and in the final objectives, in the orientations, in the forms, in the relationships… And from God, to feel called to be a group, to work as a team, to live communion and friendship. To serve, because we understand that this is the essential of the OMCC, the service: from closeness, respect, availability, listening, meeting… In a service to the life of the MCC in the whole world: not in our countries or our international groups, but in the whole of all, in the only MCC of the universal Church. And all this, with a very clearly defined framework of action, in the decree of recognition of the MCC, in the Statute of the OMCC and the book of “Fundamental Ideas”, as the best expression of the charism and the real identity of the Movement.
From this starting point, we have been working in an open and participative way, with enthusiasm, looking for ways to concretise a broad, valid, sustainable, and possible project for our four years of service. In which several lines of work and several proposals for action have been concretised: to develop a process of reflection and joint discernment that the Cursillo Movement needs today; to make possible a network of connection, intercommunication and mutual knowledge of all the realities of the Cursillo Movement; to advance on the reality of the young people in the Movement; to promote the expansion of the Movement to new areas (Africa! ); to look for concrete ways to live ecclesiality and synodality in our different environments and realities… and also, of course, how to establish a sustainable financing system for the OMCC…
Finally, it has been a gift in the experience of the Church that we have been able to share. Because our meeting took place in a Church atmosphere, in the dynamics of the Church: Catholic, universal, evangelising, in communion… But also because we had the opportunity to share this ecclesial experience, on the one hand, with those responsible for the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life. They welcomed us at the headquarters of the Dicastery with excellent friendliness and closeness. Who valued the lines of work and the projects we presented to them very positively. And who encouraged and urged us to continue working for unity, ecclesiality, and evangelisation of today’s world with enthusiasm. And, in an extraordinary way, we were also able to participate in the audience of Pope Francis at the Vatican, and we were able to greet him and exchange a few brief words with him, every one of us. In my case, they were very significant: because he asked me what we would do with our Movement, which was a great charisma in the Church… And I could only answer him with his own words, with what he had told us in the European Ultreya in Rome a few years ago: to make it bear fruit and bring “colored” life to many people..
So that was our final point. May the Lord allow us to make it a reality. May we, from the OMCC, serve the whole Movement with only that objective? And may we all, from our place, groups, Schools and Secretariats, feel called and moved by the Spirit to live and bring colorful life to all our environments.