Ultreya and Group Reunions

 In Cursillo, the Fourth Day represents the rest of your life after the 3-Day Cursillo weekend.  The Cursillo offers two opportunities to continue living your Cursillo experience: Group Reunion and Ultreya.

1. ultreya (noun) Spanish: apparently recalling the medieval cry (E)ultreya ‘onward!’, ‘forward!’ in the hymn sung by pilgrims to the Shrine of St. James in Compostela, Spain. (Oxford Dictionary)
2.  The word ‘ultreia’ (also ‘ultreya’) comes from Latin and it means ‘beyond’. Ultreya is another pilgrim salute, the meaning of ‘Ultreya!’, implies encouragement to keep going, reaching ‘beyond’, heading onwards. (CaminoWays.com)

Ultreya is an essential component of perseverance in our 4th day. We come to encourage each other in faith, sharing our lives in friendship, living out Christianity within a community, and supporting each other as we follow the path of our everyday life. 

Excerpts from “Evangelization through Conversion” by Eduardo Bonnín:

The Postcursillo is designed to facilitate the nurturing of those three essential encounters that took place on the Cursillo so that they grow and develop into true friendship — friendship of the individual with himself, with Christ, and with our brothers and sisters. Methodologically speaking, there is no doubt that the key to this process of friendship building is the last encounter — friendship with the others; not only the “others” that encompass “all” but especially the friendship with those who are intimately involved in our conversion process, those in our Friendship Group Reunion and Ultreya.

It is in the “witnessing” environment of the Ultreya where those who have just started their conversion process can meet and develop true friendships with other, likeminded people already on the journey. 

It is essential to the Cursillo method that the Ultreya remains primarily a kind of meeting place where individuals can go to make new acquaintances, to make and be friends — and develop friendships of the type that will drive, strengthen, direct and sustain the conversion process and all its unsuspected blessings.

The Ultreya is the gathering of the Friendship Groups – the Reunion of the Group Reunions.