Greetings from the beautiful Island of Grenada, Carriacou and Petite Martinique.
My name is Father Andrew Bernard. Presently I am the Parish priest of two parishes, namely: St Patrick’s and Sts Peter and Paul, and the Spiritual Advisor for the North America Caribbean Group (NACG).
I lived my Cursillo in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1997. Since then, guided by the Holy Spirit, I tried my best to live the 4th day by promoting true friendship. The Charism of the Movement has been my driving force, caring and looking out for each other.
As Spiritual Advisor, my role is to be available to the cursillistas by listening and journeying with them, and keeping all that we do centered on Jesus Christ and His gospel.
It is through respectful listening and prayerful reflection, among both laity and clergy, that the NACG collaboratively prepared the reflection below, entitled, “NACG and Synodality. “
May the movement grow from strength to strength.
De Colores
Fr Andrew Barnard
NACG Spiritual Advisor
SYNODALITY IN THE NAGC
The Cursillos in Christianity Movement (Cursillo Movement), within the North American and Caribbean Group (NACG), recognize and support our Holy Father, Pope Francis, and his call for a Synodal Catholic Church. He has laid out his vision for Synodality, which calls the People of God to journey together with respectful listening. Since before Vatican II, this was and is today, the mentality and method of the Cursillo Movement flowing from our Charism. The Cursillo Movement calls us to journey together, as pilgrims, towards the Father, bringing our brothers and sisters with us. We live our lives in friendship, in a spirit of love in which we listen to others and value the person – each person’s individuality, creativity, and uniqueness. This is Synodality!
The Holy Father compares Synodality with the Acts of the Apostles, stating it is ecclesiology’s first and most important ‘manual.’ (Address, September 18, 2021). Since its inception, the Cursillo Movement reflected on Christian life in the early Church and the Acts of the Apostles—the spread of Christianity through a Christian life of deep conviction, decisiveness, and constancy in faith. We, as Cursillistas, are the experience of those first Christians for the world today called as missionaries to live our faith in diversity yet unity as did the primitive Church. This is Synodality!
The Cursillo three-day weekend is an experience of that early Christianity, where the Leaders reflect this conviction in their witness of friendship, a charity in listening, and a living faith through precise and sequential “rollos” (presentations). With God’s Grace, these three encounters – Self, Christ, and Others – lead the Cursillistas to experience the love of God both personally and in the world where society today, as centuries ago, would say, “How these Christians love each other!” This is Synodality!
Our Charism given by the Holy Spirit is mainly focused, but not exclusively, on those “faraway” from God, those who have lost their faith or have never heard that God loves them. These faraway are encountered daily by Cursillistas, lay people, in the marketplace of their everyday lives of work and play, or with those who are our neighbors in the environments where lay people reside. The Cursillo Movement defines the faraway as those who were not fully formed in their faith, un-informed or misinformed. The rollo, Study of the Environment, is the blueprint on which the Cursillo Movement is based. It provides a plan of action for the evangelized to become evangelizers. This is Synodality!
Synodality is a listening process for making pastoral decisions, listening to the Holy Spirit speak to and through each of us through prayerful discernment and dialogue. Listening is an integral part of the method of the Cursillo Movement, a movement of the Catholic Church with a precise Charism that, when lived as intended, helps a person discover that God loves them. This leads to the beginning of an ongoing conversion that continues throughout the 4th Day, namely, the rest of one’s life.
We pray this process of Synodality introduced by Pope Francis will encourage Cursillistas to answer God’s call on all our lives: to make disciples of all nations. With 28 chapters in the Acts of the Apostles, let us, through the intercession of our patron Saint Paul, the great participant in those Acts, become the people we are called to be: living chapter 29 together in Synodality!
Christ is counting on us!
