Cursillos in Christianity Movement
Seeds of light
Eduardo Bonnín’s quotes are not merely words — they are seeds of light cast into the heart of the world.
Born of prayer, listening, and the living experience of someone who deeply loved the Church and his brothers and sisters, these expressions hold the wisdom of a man passionate about Christ and the human person.
Each quote is a spark of the Gospel lived out. An invitation to reflection. A holy provocation. A clear sign that the MCC was born to be leaven in the world.
Read them with attention. Not only with your eyes, but with your heart.
Perhaps in them you will find the echo of one of your own inner concerns. Perhaps in them you will discover that Christ is counting on you.
Let each quote speak to you at the right time.
People feel distant from the Gospel because we Christians have not yet succeeded in conveying to them, in friendship, that the love they seek is within their reach, within themselves and in us, their brothers and sisters, thanks to Christ.
Eduardo Bonnín
In every Cursillo, the Lord, the living Christ, ordinary and close to us, receives us with open arms in order to become life in each person. The Holy Spirit becomes present in those who, with enthusiasm, dedication and a spirit of charity, continue walking in an atmosphere of friendship, enabling each person, from their own originality and uniqueness, to be happier by sharing God’s love with their brothers and sisters.
Eduardo Bonnín
Action, always centred on the person, complements the thinking of Cursillos, projecting its dynamism precisely into the environments in which that person is acting, so that he or she may succeed in permeating them with friendship.
Eduardo Bonnín
Christ is the way, the truth and the life. A way that is good, fitting and possible; a truth that enlightens, clarifies and guides; a life that awakens, encourages and gives strength.
Eduardo Bonnín
One must know how to weep with joy. To love is to feel, in the deepest part of oneself, the happiness of contributing to the happiness of another.
Eduardo Bonnín
Man is greater by the attitude he knows how to adopt in the face of what he cannot do than by what he does.
Eduardo Bonnín
In a Cursillo, the best news is given — that God loves us — communicated through the best means, which is friendship, reaching the best of each person, which is their being as a person.
Eduardo Bonnín
Through friendship and the word, he transmits to others the caress of a loving God who, with tenderness, loves us unconditionally in our uniqueness, admiring our talents and setting aside our defects. For God, we are what matters most.
Eduardo Bonnín
What the world needs is Christian criteria. A criterion is always leaven. Nowadays, self-help, self-esteem and self-knowledge are fashionable. The four Gospels speak of going throughout the whole world, always beginning in Jerusalem. It is in Jerusalem that one must begin.
Eduardo Bonnín
Knowing how to believe is far greater than believing one knows.
Eduardo Bonnín
Hope is the extension of Faith through time.
Eduardo Bonnín
Man is loved by God. We know well, and in every Cursillo this can be verified, that the faith each person has in the reality that God loves them drives people from within themselves and through the events and circumstances that arise in their lives, towards their most dynamic creativity and their greatest fullness.
Eduardo Bonnín
The Cursillo is a commitment to friendship that fosters conversion or, if we prefer, the beginning of a conversion that fosters friendship.
Eduardo Bonnín
The Cursillo is an experience of identity, a hymn to life and a tribute to friendship: to live in joy, to live together in friendship and to proclaim the message with one’s life!
Eduardo Bonnín
Very often, the love of God reaches us through small details that make us happier. For that very reason, it is important that we take into account not only the great pillars, but also remain aware of the importance of small details.
Eduardo Bonnín
No one can be a person without their own consent; to be a person is to affirm oneself in the best of oneself, before oneself, and without losing sight of the gaze of those who truly love — Christ and one’s friends. To love what one desires and to desire what one loves.
Eduardo Bonnín
To love is to believe blindly in the person one loves. If one truly loves, love cannot be possessive or exclusive, because if it is, the one who loves in this way loves only himself and not the other.
Eduardo Bonnín
In the Gospel, St Peter shows us how man lets himself be led by the heart. St John shows how man knows how to use his intelligence. St James shows how man remains always firm in his will.
Eduardo Bonnín
May no one live without knowing that God loves them.
Eduardo Bonnín
Speaking about God presupposes an intellectual faith. Speaking with God already means a relationship of friendship. Letting God speak, not as an echo of ourselves, but as an acceptance of His Gospel. His words expressed in the Gospel are a bridge that unites truth to reality and reality to truth.
Eduardo Bonnín
Christ wants to be risen in each person.
Eduardo Bonnín
To evangelise is to bring to men and women the power of the Gospel. The person who believes in it, knows it and lives it gradually discovers in each situation a latent demand of the Gospel that he or she must illuminate, clarify and make conscious, through an attitude that must be human because it is Christian, and Christian because it is human.
Eduardo Bonnín
To evangelise is to try nobly to place faith, hope and charity into what one lives. To be, in every circumstance. To know how to adopt naturally the stance that, in each case, is required by the faith one has, wants to have, or is pained not to have.
Eduardo Bonnín
Christians of faith, who realise that they are.
Christians of hope, who are happy to be so.
Christians of charity, who strive to become so much more.
Eduardo Bonnín
A Cursillista is one who turns his or her freedom into a starting point for transforming the world around them. To do this, they need to appreciate beauty, find the best in others and leave the world a little better.
Eduardo Bonnín
Just as the Christian must be committed to all people, the MCC must be committed to reality. If Ultreyas do not reflect the real structure of today’s world — if there are more rich and learned people there than in the street — they show that we are not committed to the whole of reality, but only, and excessively, to one part of it.
Eduardo Bonnín
We must be open to realities. Faced with the problems they present to us, we need sensitivity to perceive them, clarity to uncover them and strength to face them.
Eduardo Bonnín
Truth only has its dwelling in the personal dimension. It cannot be inherited, stolen or imported, because that would hinder creativity and restrain the impulse it carries within itself. Whoever does not feel thirst within and from whom no springs well up from inside will never be able to bring their lips close to the water that comes from outside, no matter how close it is placed to them.
Eduardo Bonnín
To evangelise is not only to speak of the Gospel, but to make it life in one’s own life, here and now, and from oneself.
Eduardo Bonnín
Two aspects of one same love:
- To believe that God loves us;
- To believe in the possibility of loving as God wants us to love.
Eduardo Bonnín
Truth is not invented; each person must discover it. We go on discovering truths and listening to the One who gives light to reality. The Gospel is guidance, clarity and dynamism.
Eduardo Bonnín
Man is only creative when, in the likeness of God and participating in divine life, he loves and creates favourable conditions for love.
Eduardo Bonnín
Study – it is a matter of placing intelligence in the light of Truth, in order to grasp as fully as possible the gift of God and His projection in all things.
Eduardo Bonnín
The Christian fundamental, made into living, conscious and active life, strengthens the qualities of the person and helps them in their personal decision, which has always implied being Christian; it implies being faithful to Christ’s invitation, “take up your cross and follow me”, which, for whoever wishes to follow Him, means flying in the opposite direction to every crucifying, painful circumstance they have or that may arise in their life.
Eduardo Bonnín
One can speak about God, speak with God, or let God speak and receive His Word. His Words are the Gospel, which is the bridge that unites truth with reality and reality with truth.
Eduardo Bonnín
To live in joy, to live together in friendship, to proclaim the message with one’s life. De Colores!
Eduardo Bonnín
May the pure water of truth find its way through the rocky, dry and resistant ground of each person’s ordinary life.
Eduardo Bonnín
Charity/Love is the expression and incarnation of Faith in life, in the place and at the moment in which life is lived — that is, always.
Eduardo Bonnín
Security frees us from fear and destruction; the meaning of life frees us from despair before the absurd; and love frees us from anguish before isolation and loneliness.
Eduardo Bonnín
One must know how to live with joy, live together in friendship and proclaim the message with one’s life.
Eduardo Bonnín
The Cursillo is where, by the grace of God and the prayers of many:
- The True becomes timely.
- The Good becomes attractive.
- The Possible becomes concrete.
Eduardo Bonnín
The Cursillos in Christianity, because of what they have of the Gospel, energise faith, awaken creativity and give life its leading role.
Eduardo Bonnín
Christianity is simple, concrete and possible. It is a pity that we confuse the simple with the easy, the concrete with the immediate, and the possible with what is cost-free.
If we complicate the simple, it ceases to be natural;
If we make the concrete abstract, it ceases to be human;
If we make the possible impossible, it ceases to be normal.
Eduardo Bonnín
What is unsettling about the Gospel is that it is possible in you, right now and from this very moment.
Eduardo Bonnín
When someone becomes aware that God exists, they realise that He first insists upon them, at the moment when His Grace encounters human freedom, and that afterwards He helps them so that they may fulfil His purposes.
Eduardo Bonnín
The Gospel believed and loved, practised and lived, is a world in motion, in the re-creation of the whole universe in Christ, who passes by, dies and rises in us, in each one of us, always and every day, in order to reach others and convert them.
Eduardo Bonnín
The paths of goodness were not built by professionals in humanity who, in the circumstances, almost always spared human material. For this reason, when walking along them, do not forget that unforeseen slips may drive away many hopes, but they may also serve to secure and reinvigorate convictions.
Eduardo Bonnín
The Cursillo is a change of mindset. Many people lack the capacity for wonder because they are asleep or distracted, and only an unexpected or desperate collision with reality or with silence gives them their first opportunity for reflection.
Eduardo Bonnín
Cursillos are not a change within the system, but a change of system. Not merely an achievable reality, but rather an axis that we must give to history.
Eduardo Bonnín
The message that Cursillos seek to transmit is simple, but not easy; concrete, but not immediate; possible, but not without effort.
Eduardo Bonnín
Christians are possessed by Faith, Hope and Charity. Through faith they realise that they are Christians; through hope they are happy to be so; and through charity they enable others to become so much more.
Eduardo Bonnín
When speaking of a friend, in particular, it is obligatory — or rather, it is proper, necessary and fitting among Christians — to speak first of the most singular friend: Christ, living, ordinary and close, who, when we interiorise Him through Grace, lovingly makes us aware of what we have of Him, because we were thought of and created in the image of God, and of what we still lack so that the simple and always possible likeness may become true, perhaps attempted and, who knows, rarely achieved…
Eduardo Bonnín
Being able to bring those who are distant into the Cursillo Movement always requires from its leaders great perseverance, charity and deep respect for the person. It is fitting that they meditate very seriously on the labourers who went to work in the vineyard and who, although they had worked from the first hour, received the same wage as those who were brought in much later.
Eduardo Bonnín
The Gospel places us in the real reality of what is truly true.
Eduardo Bonnín
Faith is the clear and unequivocal vision of true reality. Everything is arranged by God so that the exercise of belief may be easy and spontaneous in man. To believe, it is enough to want to.
Eduardo Bonnín
Faith is the expanding wave produced by believing in the reality of what God has done to draw close to man. It is an option of our freedom, a conquest of our effort, a personalization that makes us individual.
Eduardo Bonnín
Faith is not only believing in what we do not see, but knowing how to give a Christian interpretation to what we do see.
Eduardo Bonnín
Action – Consider that perhaps God has entrusted the salvation of many to your self-giving…
Eduardo Bonnín
Without loving oneself, it is impossible to love others. If we are not faithful to ourselves, with rigorous fidelity, we cannot be faithful to others nor to those we love. Whoever does not know himself is incapable of being a friend to another; whoever does not want to know himself is not worthy of having friends; whoever deceives himself will deceive others; whoever hides and falsifies his personality will, sooner or later, disappoint those around him.
Eduardo Bonnín
A Cursillo is to live in joy, to live together in friendship and to proclaim the message with one’s life!
Eduardo Bonnín
Truly friendly people are not possessive; what they want is for the other person to move in freedom, without realizing that both are mutually impelling each other toward the best of each one and for each one.
Eduardo Bonnín
Everything Christian is simple, possible, pleasant and free. And we make it complicated, impossible, unpleasant and costly.
Eduardo Bonnín
One moves forward by knowing how to believe, not by believing that one knows. There are those who want to learn by studying what can only be understood by loving.
Eduardo Bonnín
I have often thought about what distinguishes the clever from the foolish, and I have come to the conclusion that the clever may deceive many, but they never manage to deceive themselves. The clever know how to deal with failures; the foolish hardly know how to deal with success.
Eduardo Bonnín
The Christian attitude is manifested through:
- A Spirit that makes everything converge towards the one thing necessary.
- A Mentality, like a luminous framework of ideas.
- A criterion, as a lucid conviction and a reflected decision.
- A Style, which is personal, and through which each person gives an outlet to their falls and frailties.
Eduardo Bonnín