Cursillo

As I was meeting some friends of mine earlier today I learned that a few of them will be going to Cursillo in a few months.  Cursillo is a retreat that is really so much more than just a retreat.  It is a very intense 3-day journey that does not really end.  I lived my Cursillo about 2 years ago and the "4th day" so far has generally been better than the zero-eth day (or whatever you would call the day before the first day).  This would be especially true in regard to the most recent time leading up to my Cursillo.

I first heard about Cursillo back in the autumn of 2008 when someone at my parish spoke about his experience.  I talked to him about it and the October Cursillo was coming up very soon.  I wanted to go to that one but for some reason I was not going to be available.  It might have been work-related.

So the focus was then on December.  Well, there was a tentative project at work that was going to go all week and I wanted to be available for that - to keep me productive.  Well, the project did not happen but by the time I knew that, it was just before Thanksgiving.  I e-mailed the guy who spoke about Cursillo but he did not receive the message until after Thanksgiving, now less than a week away from Cursillo.  He got me a form to fill out right away on Monday but this form was rather complex and involved - much more so than for a standard weekend retreat.  It also required me to get contact information from him and one other person (another step, and via e-mail the back-and-forth took another day).  The reason we needed another person's contact information is because this guy had not yet gone a full year since his Cursillo so he could not solo sponsor anyone yet.  So I got the information I needed on Tuesday night and sent the form out on Wednesday.  Cursillo starts on Thursday evening and they were full anyway so it did not work out for December 2008.

In February 2009 I went on a Vocation Discernment Retreat so Cursillo did not work out then.  In April 2009 my backcountry ski tour in the Alps that year overlapped with that weekend so I was going to have to wait for the next season to start.  So that brought us to October 2009.

In October 2009 there was a concert involving Skillet, Hawk Nelson, Decyfer Down, and The Letter Black.  Christian rock is something I had just gotten into earlier that year and this was a monster line-up that almost rivaled what I saw at Rock the Sound in New York back in August 2009 (Red, Pillar, Decyfer Down, Remedy Drive, Double Edge).  So I went to the concert.

In December 2009, a friend of mine was celebrating her birthday and her Toronto Maple Leafs were visiting the Boston Bruins on a Saturday night (Hockey Night in Canada!).  Getting to see your team on the road is really cool too and the fact that this was also her birthday made it extra epic for her.  So I joined in the big birthday celebration.

I was considering the possibility of going on a Vocation Discernment Retreat again in February 2010 so I did not bother signing up for that month's Cursillo.  I felt that, unlike during the previous year, I was ready this time for a Vocation Retreat.  I had some spiritual direction, I felt like I was part of a parish community (Saint Monica in Methuen, MA), I was feeling much more confident and secure, and I had recently gone on another retreat (BU Fall Retreat 2009) that made me feel good and pumped as opposed to earlier retreats that left me feeling angry and misunderstood.  But I did not go on the Vocation Retreat in February 2010 because at the time I was dealing with another issue.

I was in the middle of a rather difficult time in my life when I was neither going to Confession nor receiving Communion.  I will not go into the specifics about why I had gone for an extended time like this while still attending Mass but I will say it was the first such drought since receiving my Sacraments of Initiation nearly 10 years prior.  Still, I signed up for the April 2010 Cursillo not really knowing how it would work out.

After arriving on Thursday evening and going through a full day of intense activity on Friday, there was an opportunity for Confession.  Since the beginning of Advent more than 4 months prior, I had plenty of such opportunities but did not bother.  But this one involved priests who were visiting even though they were not part of the weekend's Cursillo program.  One of those priests was Father Richard O'Brien, a regular visitor to the Saint Monica Rectory where I often had dinner with the parish priests and their friends.  I was still not sure.  I really wanted to go to Confession in the worst way but felt that I would be living a lie.

I lined up for the door to the room where Father Richard was hearing Confession but always allowed people to jump in front of me.  But then at one point there was no line and it was still early in the evening.  I still wasn't sure.  Then someone else showed up and I let them go ahead.  So I went to my bunk room to think about it some more.  Incidentally, the room Father Richard was in was labelled with a large paper sign that said "Father Richard" and it was right across the hall from my room.  It was impossible to ignore!  So I went back out to the hallway again and when the other person exited the room I decided to give it a shot.

I felt an enormous burden lifted off me and I felt that I could trust that God would make things work out, no matter what kind of mess I was in.  I would keep going to Mass and keep receiving Communion and just put all my trust in His Divine Mercy - somehow things would all get sorted.  I suppose it was fitting that this took place on Divine Mercy Weekend.  Cursillo was a lot of things for me, as it was for everyone else there.  But because of the timing of it combined with my own circumstances, it seems that it could be best described for me, personally, as a time of healing.

Luke 15: 1-3, 11-32