I agree heartily with Fr. Jones' assertion in his article, "Cursillo Awakens the Heart" [TLC, Jan. 24], that Cursillo is "one of the most potent methods for spiritual formation in the church today."

This is certainly the case in the Diocese of Long Island, and such a statement is attested to by the number of Cursillistas who hold positions of leadership in the diocese, including trustees, members of the standing committee, and deputies to General Convention. At the parish level, the leadership role of the Cursillista is often more apparent and manifests itself as well in giving to the parish.

However, I am surprised that Fr. Jones omits explicitly from his article any mention of what the Cursillo movement considers the key to the Cursillo experience - the Fourth Day. The three-day Cursillo weekend, without follow-up, is likely to remain just a weekend experience. It will provide one with wonderful insights into the self, the scriptures and the theology of the church. It might well become a first step or a successive step on a journey to Christ. It could very well offer moments of friendship and joy in the risen Christ never before experienced. However, without a Fourth Day discipline, without a structured program that provides for continued growth beyond the weekend, Cursillo risks becoming just one more religious fad, one in which all the teaching and wisdom, all the sacrifice and unconditional love, all the shared moments and personal growth of the weekend, are "received with joy but have no root and thus endure only for a while."

The thrust of the Cursillo weekend experience in our diocese is directed toward a continuing commitment which is highly disciplined and which is defined by piety, study and action, the tripod on which the weekend and the Fourth Day are built and which echoes strongly the discipline encouraged by the Brotherhood of St. Andrew. The power of the weekend itself derives from the living testimony of those who have committed themselves to this program. Perhaps the individual has adopted a rule of life, or engaged a spiritual director, or taken classes in a variety of disciplines at a diocesan seminary or center for education, or participated in Education for Ministry (EFM) or a parish Bible study. Whatever the course of action chosen, one discovers much more than a "warm fuzzy." Instead, those who continue the discipline bear fruit, "thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold."

While extolling the virtues of the Cursillo movement and its continuing discipline beyond the weekend, I am very much aware of the dangers of which Ms. Tobiason writes in the accompanying article, "I Couldn't Run and I Couldn't Hide." To combat this danger in our diocese, we attempt to express what might be called "mere" Episcopalianism, the faith once delivered to the apostles and attested to in the scriptures, the creeds and the Book of Common Prayer. No one who attends a Cursillo weekend should expect theological innovations.

In our diocese, we use a manual which charts the course of the entire weekend in order to attempt to alleviate some of the intrusions and violations which Ms. Tobiason cites. That manual took several years to put together and was done with much prayer in an attempt to assure the integrity of the Cursillo experience for every participant. While the team which puts on a weekend changes, the dynamics of the weekend should always remain the same, and every attempt ought to be made to ensure that no one's physical or spiritual space is either invaded or violated. To borrow from C. S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters, the desire of the Cursillo experience is to enhance "mere Christians," not to produce something called "Cursillo And" - Cursillo and New Music for the Local Parish, Cursillo and the Gifts of the Spirit, Cursillo for the Reluctant Rector, Cursillo and the Warm Fuzzy Experience. Unfortunately, we are not always successful, and those people remain who will force their own brand of spirituality upon others.

At its worst, any religious experience, including Cursillo, which produces the responses articulated by Ms. Tobiason, balks and withers, divides and weakens the church of Christ. But, at its best, Cursillo has the power to offer an experience so sublime or awesome that it is nearly impossible to render it into the precision of language, and only words used as metaphors or symbols will suffice. It provides such an extended moment of joy and delight that all you want to do is behold Christ because, in some way, he was not only transfigured, but also transfigured you. It is as if you had gazed upon someone in such a pure manner that nothing else could ever be the same.

At its best, the Cursillo weekend may be similar to that "chariot of fire" we read about when Elijah is taken into heaven, a moment of transcendent glory. It is a weekend which acts as a preface to the rest of one's life, one in which you know for certain that in your self-surrender God has filled all the empty spaces and you seek only to contemplate his love and goodness, knowing as gloriously true all that Paul and John write of love, all that Jesus has to say of love. Reverence and awe replace any desire to manipulate or exploit for one's own purpose.

At its best, Cursillo is like the Transfiguration, but only like. The cloudiness which infects our sight, which inhibits our ability to see clearly, sometimes almost to the point of blindness, is washed away so that the heart of all our seeing is "rinsed and cleansed" so that for a moment we have given back to us "the clear unfallen world."

At its best, Cursillo equips one to enter his or her Fourth Day and perceive that the locked gate of the fallen Eden is unlocked. One wonders whether it is possible that anyone should understand such a vision. And then we meet someone on our journey who announces that the change was not in us alone, that we have not been left forlorn, exiles or prisoners.

At its best, Cursillo affirms that all the joys of the weekend live and continue to bloom and blossom and flower. Our human voices may appear to be eclipsed as we attempt to tell of the moments, but the moments continue to speak: in music, in art, in poetry, in the created world itself, and in the lives of those who see as we move from darkness into light. In the Cursillo weekend at its best and in all that it touches, our selves, our souls, our lives, we are equipped to see "the unseeable/One glory of the everlasting world/Perpetually at work."

The Rev. John E. Morrison III is the head spiritual director of the Long Island Episcopal Cursillo. He lives in Brightwaters, N.Y.