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Be Not Afraid - Reviving the Weekend in Tucson

Bill & Linda Calandrella

(Excerpted from Spring 1992 Matrimony magazine)

"Be not afraid, I go before you always... " Those words from one of our favorite songs from "Glory and Praise" have been our refuge and our shield since the Mass we shared with our Northern Colorado & Section Nine lovers right before we packed up and moved to the "barren desert" 9 years ago. Sometimes they're difficult words for us to live by, being the very human, Thomas-like couple we are, yet this past year the words gave us...and others...life as we faced what seemed like the impending death of Marriage Encounter in Tucson.

In the summer of 1990, following several stormy years for our Encounter, Andy & Sharon Bramante (who were serving as our Exec. Team) moved to South Dakota to answer God's call to be lay missionaries. (Matrimony magazine; Summer, 1990) Four of the six remaining team couples chose this time to respond to other needs in their life and quit giving weekends. We had no team priests either and, because of life circumstances, we lost the community couples who were coordinating various structures within our Encounter. We were one of the remaining teams. Floyd & Ceil Mills, a Rookie Team who had spent all summer writing for their first weekend to be held in September, were the other.

We were devastated. We asked ourselves and God questions like, "Why? What do we do now? What is this telling us? How can we go on?" We missed our former teams...the special lovers & dreamers with whom we'd shared the journey and support. Who would workshop? Who would help pass on formation? We anguished and dialogued and prayed. Then we sat down with Floyd & Ceil, a faith-filled and loving, giving Sacramental couple who told us they were willing to walk together with us and bring life. They saw our gift of experience and their gift of fresh enthusiasm, together with our shared faith as enough...we'd work out logistics. We shared a dream and we had hope again, so we decided to give us a year to respond to, "Come follow me...", to rebuild our Encounter.

But we knew we couldn't do it alone. We invited anyone in our community to join us for an emergency meeting where we told them the story and asked for their help. Thirteen couples who shared our love for the Weekend were there that night, a sign to us that our Father was hearing our plea. As a result of both the invitation that we had sent out and that evening, we were blessed with couples committed to tasks, to prayer, and to recruiting.

As a community we've placed our whole focus on the Weekend and essential follow-up to build a community. We had no choice...there were too few of us to follow old structures, too little time and too much to do to have a zillion meetings. Together, this whole past year we went back to basics...prayer, recruiting, supporting and giving the Weekend, and doing Weekend follow-up, including diocesan-wide parish sharing groups.

Also last summer, as all this was happening, we were trying to schedule the September weekend. There were only 13 couples registered and our Encounter is committed to give 20 to 25 couple weekends. We asked our community for prayers and active recruiting. Though no new kinds of recruiting tactics were arranged, once again we saw God working for His weekend. Couples began inviting their friends, and He put in the hearts of those invited the willingness to say yes. From out of the blue, having read the bulletin announcements we'd been putting out monthly, couples began to respond. Our phone, so long silent, became like a receptionist's phone at a library Info. line. We had 25 couples within two weeks. Bill, the skeptic, kept saying, "I can't believe it! Where did they come from?" Linda, the one of little faith, amazed at each new registration, had to kick herself again and again for not believing. A delighted Floyd & Ceil kept reminding us, "We told you He's taking care of us."

No one cancelled at the last minute from our September weekend. Twenty-five strong, loving, desiring Sacraments lived every minute of the weekend with us from "Intro " through "The Open & Apostolic Couple" and Mass. They were so powerfully touched by Fr. Bob Jones that their donations brought extra to cover his flight to Tucson. We told them in the "Inviting" talk that their weekend almost didn't happen and that, if it hadn't been for the love and dream of couples who had gone before them and didn't want the Weekend to die, they wouldn't be there that weekend. We asked them to consider that we had no one signed up for the next Weekend in Nov. and that if they chose not to invite their family and friends, their Weekend could be Tucson’s last. Even saying those words, not written into our talk, we were very much aware that our Father was speaking through us to call His couples to be open and apostolic for His sake, for His couples, for the church. When they responded after the Weekend, we were very much humbled by the continued blessing of being able to witness His miracles.

Together as a community, we've dreamed and tried to be creative. We've had a Mini-Day and other Community Events. An Apostolic Board has been created to be missionaries of marriage in the Diocese. Sharing groups are recruiting with spaghetti dinners and dessert and coffees. We see God letting these couples know how much their gifts are needed and they are using their gifts to touch others. While Tucson is the hub and population center, our Diocese covers all of southern Arizona, and there are special couples spread from Yuma to Safford and Casa Grande to Nogales who have taken their Weekend home and tried to build community or invite others to the Weekend. They are miles from support for their dialogue, but hungering to surround themselves with others who live the Weekend values and are doing something about it. Their continuing link is through the "Spirit" and through the contact from their teams and prayer couples.

We've come a long way in our year, and we've been reminded often of whose Weekend we are sharing and what the values are that we are called to focus on. The "Inviting" talk on the Weekend seems to have an urgency in it, a deep desire for our faith family to be touched by this powerful weekend. God is working through the couples who hear that talk and the couples in the community to live it. He is working through our special, relationship oriented Bishop Moreno, through our priests who invite us or let us in to their parishes to reach their couples, and through our Family Life Office to bring the good news of the Weekend to others.

A typical Saturday evening/Sunday morning twice a month all summer has found various couples at widely-varied parishes handing out brochures or doing talks. We continue to hold a monthly Info Hour, publicizing it in every Tucson parish bulletin, and advertising the Weekend monthly in all outlying parish bulletins. By God's grace, we've gone from having only 3 weekends from January, 1989 through August, 1990 (in a Diocese of 337,000 Catholics) to having 4 Weekends of 85 total couples. While we are growing, we are not "rebuilt". We have only 4 Team couples. We have 4 established sharing groups and the possibilities of 4 more in outlying towns. Four is a partly-full cup, but it is not the fulfillment of our dream. And, we are less for having no active or newly encountered priests in our community. So, our dreams still burn in our hearts.

"Priests of God, say Mass today as if it were your first Mass. Priest of God, say Mass today as if it were your last Mass. Priest of God, say Mass today as if it were the only mass." We heard Fr. Chuck Gallagher share this quote from a sign he once read while vesting for Mass. (This was its essence, if not the exact words.) We believe that this is how we are called to love each other in our Sacrament every day. We believe this is how we're called to love, support, and call forth the gifts from each of our couples and priests making the Weekend, as if they're the first who have made the Weekend, the last who will make a Weekend, the only who will make a Weekend. We try to live as passionately in recruiting as if the next Weekend were the first, the last, our only, chance to touch our church.

God's Encounter in Tucson Arizona is alive because He wants it to be. We are a couple who often lack faith and who almost think that a sign from God must be on a billboard saying, "Dear Bill & Linda,"...then a message, ending with, "Love, God", and stamped with a nihil obstat and an imprimatur. The signs of His works here have been that clear this past year in the miracles and through the love of people.

We see relationship among those in our community, born out of choice, not necessarily because they're on a Board together. We see interactions happen often as they do God's work, not just because they sit together at a monthly meeting. Couples are living not only the one and holy marks, but also the open and apostolic marks of their Sacrament because they feel needed and empowered.

There are times when we think this must be- like the beginning of Marriage Encounter when encountered lovers lived a radical lifestyle that kept them out late and up early, on the road and in their parish, speaking love and living faith...out of a passion in their relationship and for their church and Marriage Encounter.

There isn't time right now for pettiness and politics. We don't spend time focused on making new rules and creating structures. As a community, we hold fast to the values of living a dialoguing lifestyle, bringing the Weekend to our couples and priests, and touching our church. We have to or we will have no Encounter.

We hope and pray that our Father will continue to lead us to a strong and healthy Encounter... many Weekends, lots of couples and priests, a vital community of lovers and apostles. If you have a dream and you know you can accomplish it, then you depend only on yourselves and you don't have your eyes on God, so dare to dream twice as big and know in your hearts you can't do it without Him.

"You shall cross the barren desert, but you shall not die of thirst. You shall wander far in safety, though you do not know the way...You shall see the face of God and live." Our community has seen. We believe!

Vaya con Dios...
Tucson loves you!

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