You might say The Rev. Becky Toalster, rector of Holy Trinity, Bartow, was born for Cursillo. Her family and church heritage in the movement stretch back for many years.
“My parents attended Cursillo in this diocese when I was about 3,” she said, adding, “I grew up in a very Cursillo-centric congregation, St. Stephen’s in Lakeland.” As she reviewed some of her mother’s Cursillo papers, Toalster said, she even found the signature of one of her current parishioners.
Blanket of Love
Her own experience of Cursillo had a huge impact on her life. But that impact was preceded by her attendance at Camp Wingmann’s Happening, “which is basically the teenager version of Cursillo,” Toalster said. There, the future priest moved from a shy introvert to someone who realized she could be a leader among her peers.
When she attended Cursillo as a college student, she remembers telling her godmother, who was also her sponsor for Cursillo, “Last time, I went to Happening. I came back, and I was a leader for my peers … but I’m not going to be a priest if I go to Cursillo, you know.”
But God had a different plan. “Cursillo just envelops you in this blanket of love – and not only the feeling of being loved, but you experience the action of love,” Toalster said. “People have sacrificed to pray for you while you’re on the weekend; it’s just a very powerful thing to experience.”
Within a year of Toalster’s first Cursillo experience, she felt a call to full-time ministry. And as soon as she could (one year after she first attended), she became part of the Cursillo team herself. “I was what they call a cha cha,” Toalster said. “Basically, we go for whatever is needed.”
Growth in Faith
Today, she often serves as a spiritual adviser for diocesan Cursillos, now scheduled to reopen for in-person experience in the spring of 2022. “At Cursillo, they gave me tools to help me grow my faith and grow in my faith and facilitate leadership,” she said.
One of the ways Toalster grew in her faith following Cursillo was through the program’s grouping discipline, in which “you get together with a small group of people, and you go through different sections on a little card,” she said. “It goes through three main categories of piety, study and action. And under piety, you might answer the question of ‘What was my closest moment to Christ this week? Where did I move with my week this week?’ And then for study, ‘What are you studying to help you grow in your faith?’ And then action, ‘What have you done for Christ this week?’ It just gives you the opportunity to be held accountable.”
And Toalster has a passion for seeing others experience the spiritual growth fostered by the Cursillo experience. “If you want to continue to grow in your faith … Cursillo is definitely a way to do that,” she said. “If you want to have a great time and sing lots of songs and get to know a bunch of really neat people, absolutely, you should attend. And if you want to experience the love of Christ as you never have before, you should definitely go to Cursillo, because it will change your life.”