Important News
April Ultreya. Sponsoring for 2025 Fall Cursillo Weekends
The April Calgary Ultreya will be held at Holy Cross Anglican Church in Calgary on April 11 at 7:30pm. A Zoom option links were emailed. Please try to attend live. This is the Ultreya after the weekend so some new Cursillistas will be there. Now is a great time to sponsor someone to experience a Cursillo Weekend for the fall 2025! The fall dates are Oct 30 – Nov 2 for the men and Nov 6-9 for the women. The fall weekends will be the usual format (not shortened or co-ed).
For Application and Sponsorship forms, e-mail Stew: stewp@telus.net 403-818-9676
Remember to share your Cursillo experiences with others in your church community and continue to pray for the Cursillo movement in our Diocese and around the world!
Also, we’re still looking for some more parish reps to share info about Cursillo with your people. If your congregation doesn’t have a parish rep, that person could be you!
Contact Dan to sign up: dan_b80@telus.net
The Calgary Anglican Cursillo Movement
Calgary Anglican Church Cursillo Movement is a movement of the Church providing a method by which Christians are empowered to grow through prayer, study, and action and enabled to share God’s love and grace with everyone.
Greetings and Invitation To Spiritual Life
Cursillo (pronounced Kur…See…Yo) is a Spanish word meaning ‘short course’
The full title is Cursillo de Christiandad, meaning a short course in Christian living. Cursillo opens us up to a deeper relationship with Christ and presents a method of Christian living so we can make a difference for Christ in the world around us. The Cursillo method helps individuals understand the calling of all Christians to be Christian leaders. This leadership may be exercised at work, in family life, social life, in leisure activities, and within the church.
Cursillo is for anyone (including Clergy) who wants to go deeper in their spiritual life through both teaching and personal experience of both Christian community and the Holy Spirit. It is ideal as preparation for leadership and lay ministry in parishes and in the world. The weekend may be tiring for some and is not for people in a personal crisis. Most parishes have Clergy and Lay Cursillo Representatives who would be happy to talk to you and arrange sponsorship and registration – or you can simply apply through this website under the Apply Now pull-down menu.
The Weekends are held at the beautiful Entheos Retreat Centre on the banks of the Elbow River between Calgary and Bragg Creek. Following the Weekend, participants are encouraged to continue meeting weekly or bi-weekly in small fellowship groups for mutual support and encouragement. Monthly Ultreya (onward) celebrations are held on the second Friday of each Month at St. Barnabas Anglican Church at 7:30 PM.
What Is Cursillo?
Cursillo (pronounced kur-SEE-yo)
A Spanish word meaning “short course”. The full title is Cursillo de Christiandad, meaning a short course in Christian living.
Cursillo is intended for Christian leaders. It presents a method of Christian living and demonstrates how to structure our lives so as to make a difference in the world.
The Cursillo method helps individuals understand their calling to be Christian leaders. This leadership may be exercised at work, in family life, in social life, in leisure activities, and within the church.
Cursillo is not a substitute for your parish church. Rather, is designed to help you renew and enhance your Christian life, and to enable you to function more fully within your parish.
Bringing Christ to the world is not an easy task. It is a life long commitment. The Cursillo method, as a tool in fulfilling this promise, is likewise a continuing commitment – unlike one-time events such as seminars or encounter weekends.
The Cursillo method has three major components: The Weekend, Group Reunion and Ultreyas.
Weekend Description
The Cursillo method includes a separate three-day weekend for Men and Women, which begins on Thursday evening and concludes on Sunday.
During this time, talks are given by lay persons and clergy who have spent time working together planning and preparing for the weekend.
The weekend is an opportunity to meet other individuals who are seeking to strengthen their faith. It provides an opportunity through shared prayer, worship, singing, study, fellowship, discussion, and love to experience the reality of the gift of God’s grace.
The Cursillo weekend is not a retreat, nor is there any fasting or extended periods of silence. The Eucharist is celebrated daily.
Cursillistas return from the weekend with a renewed commitment to work for Christ. To maintain this commitment, Cursillistas are encouraged to join in the activities of the community of persons who have also experienced the weekend.
The purpose of this community is to give strength and support to each other in order that each person might grow in faith and develop their particular gifts of ministry.
Frequently Asked Questions
Cursillo is open to adult Christian laity or clergy, men or women, married or single.
In the Diocese of Calgary, weekends are held in the Spring and Autumn. There are separate weekends for women and men, normally one week apart.
Married couples are encouraged to attend successive weekends but this is not mandatory.
- To be open and willing to respond to what you experience, to share your feelings with others, and to allow others to share their feelings with you
- To make a genuine effort to discover where and how you can grow in your Christian life
- To feel secure in the knowledge that you are accepted as you are, and to understand that a specific response is not expected of you
- To be curious and thirsty for spiritual exploration and nourishment
- To acknowledge a need to commit a weekend of your life to Christ
- The cost for the weekend is $ 255.00 CDN for Double Occupancy (share a room) or $285.00 CAD for Single Occupancy (room to yourself), which covers lodging, meals, and materials.
- Financial aid is available through the Diocesan office of the Anglican Diocese of Calgary and, if required, should be requested when an application is submitted.
- Each candidate must be sponsored. Your sponsor will assist you in preparation for the weekend and, more importantly, assist you after the weekend.
- In many cases a prospective sponsor from within your parish may approach you about Cursillo.
- If you are interested in Cursillo but do not have sponsor, speak to your parish representative or someone in your parish whom you know has attended a Cursillo weekend. Ask them to tell you more about Cursillo. Pray about it, and if you conclude that you should go, ask them to sponsor you. If you don’t know your parish representative or anyone in your parish who has attended a Cursillo weekend, ask your Rector.
History
The first stirrings of what later was to become the Cursillo Movement began on the island of Majorca, Spain during the 1940s. The Spanish Civil War had ended in 1939, and the years after the Civil War were a time of ferment in the Spanish Church. Cursillo as we recognize it today grew out of the courses given to prepare those who led the young men of Spain on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James at Compostela in 1948. The talks given on the Cursillo weekend are patterned on these courses. Today Cursillo is a world-wide movement with centres in Canada, Great Britain, Australia, Ireland, the United States, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Yugoslavia, Mexico, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, nearly all South and Central American countries, and in several African countries. A term frequently used in Cursillo is DeCOLORES which means “of many colors.” During the early days in Spain, the people who participated in the Cursillo Movement realized the value of the symbol of the rooster and its beautiful tail feathers. To the Spanish, the rooster was symbolic of the rainbow in the Old Testament where God makes a covenant with His People. Also the Spanish found the rooster a symbol of wealth and prosperity, a status symbol in a rural farm area. Roosters wander the roadways and hillsides all over Spain. And a good rooster and hen give promise of eggs and more chickens to come. 
Thus the countryman has promise of food and a commodity to sell or trade to provide for his family and community. The rainbow colours of the tail feathers have a special and significant meaning to the Christian. Green denotes new life, growth, and God’s beauty of nature that surrounds us. It symbolizes the ordinary times of the Church year. Blue denotes loyalty, our commitment to God and His people.It also denotes truth and justice and the waters of our Baptism. Purple denotes our dying and rising again along with the suffering of Jesus Christ. Yellow and Orange hues denote warmth, light, promise. They remind us of the love of God’s Son in our lives, the light of a candle, the rays of the sun, and the changing seasons. Red denotes celebration, joy and confirmation. It is symbolic of our feast days within, the Church, Christmas Day and Pentecost. It is for the reasons observed here that we celebrate the Rooster as the Cursillo symbol.