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Monday, June 14, 2010

A4D

St. David's hosted a diocesan-wide Ultreya last evening. Ultreya is a Spanish word meaning "forward". It is used by Cursillo to signify a gathering of the Cursillo community and guests to build each other up in our Christian life and call to ministry. A4D is shorthand for Anglican Fourth Day, the ACNA successor, to Cursillo. The Cursillo name is trademarked and can only be used by those who have a license issued by the National Secretariat of the Roman Catholic Church. TEC holds the license, therefore, we became A4D.

About sixty gathered in our parish hall with, as I counted, folks from at least fifteen different parishes. About a quarter of the participants were A4Ders from St David's including all five of our newbies from the past women's weekend. St. David's is one of the stronger parishes in the diocesan A4D movement. The Lay Leader of the diocesan Secretariat in Kathi Marks from here as well as one of the two diocesan Spiritual Directors is moi. St. David's has had three diocesan Lay Leaders from our ranks Kathi, Don Bushyager and Ron Osucha (Ron was a larger-than-life, legendary, laymen. He died some years ago.). The rectora (lay person in charge) of last month's Women's Weekend was Ginger Machak. The rector of the upcoming Men's Weekend in March 2011 is Scott Smith. Interestingly one of the national leaders in the A4D movement is the Rev. John Nuzum. John now lives in Virginia but back in the day he was a Cursillo leader from St David's. In fact, he was the rector of the weekend I attended in March 1987 and many of the team members were from St David's too.

Jess Wylie a fairly new person to A4D (Anglican Fourth Day) gave an excellent lay witness which engendered lots of response from the gathering. She and her husband Jeff are from Holy Innocents Leechburg. Following small group gatherings' we joined together for plethora of snacks.

Lastly, I was handed a card from one of the participants. I opened it this morning. The writer was a young single mom from one of my former parishes. She wrote:

Dear David,

I want you to know that you have blessed my life so much. Although your being at A4D weekend #94 was about your church folks, God used your presence there as a reminder to me that he has placed all the right "fathers" in my life and will do the same for my son. DeColores!

What a blessing. It makes ministry all worthwhile.

1 comment:

  1. Fr. David,

    I was involved in the Pittsburgh Episcopal Cursillo movement back in the 80s, as well. I remember John Nuzum well, as he was a Rollista for my Cursillo. I also remember being a Rollista myself in a later Cursillo for which Fr. Leighton was the Spiritual Director. My family and I left the Episcopal Church in 1988, and are now, after many diversions, home in the Catholic Church. I did not know that John Nuzum was ordained, and am glad to hear that he was. Good memories...

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