By Lisa Benoit

Despite unexpected heavy rains, more than 200 people turned out for the Basic Christian Community of Hawaii (BCC) 20th anniversary celebration at McCoy Pavilion at Ala Moana Park on Jan. 29.

With Mass, lunch, music and games, the day was a festive celebration for a Hawaii lay movement that has changed thousands of lives since 1985, bringing faithful Catholics closer to God, welcoming back those who had left the church, and bringing others into the fold.

If you haven’t attended a BCC “spirituality weekend” or been to a weekly BCC cell group meeting, chances are you know someone who has.

According to one of its spiritual directors, BCC owes its success to its fundamental focus — to help members build a personal relationship with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, with an emphasis on the sacraments, God’s love and mercy, and prayer.

Participants “feel God’s love for them like they never felt it before — his forgiving, merciful love,” said Benedictine Sister Mary Jo McEnany, BCC co-spiritual director with Benedictine Father Michael Sawyer.

The BCC is a lay movement whose members gather in small groups to support each other in the study of the faith and Christ’s word, and to live more fully the Christian life.

Participants usually begin with a weekend retreat.

It is a life-changing experience for many, Sister Mary Jo said. Attendees emerge appreciating a “purpose” for life, a “new importance” in their families and the “value” of relationships.

“It is not unusual for people to go home after a weekend and call a parent or a divorced spouse and ask for forgiveness,” she said.

Basic Christian Community has conducted more than 60 retreats for adults over the past two decades, each attended by about 40 people.

It has given 23 retreats for teens, each attended by about 50 youth, ages 14-18, helping to fulfill confirmation requirements. BCC has recently added a young adult retreat for ages 14 through 40.

Today, BCC offers eight retreats a year for adults, two for teens and one for young adults.

The retreats are advertised by “word-of-mouth,” Sister Mary Jo said. Participants “go out and recruit because they don’t want a family member or a friend to pass it by.”

In the beginning

BCC was started by a group of lay people already involved in small group communities with similar retreats. They wanted a program with more family involvement.

The first BCC “spirituality weekend” was held in 1985 at the St. Stephen Diocesan Center. Retreatants were offered the sacraments of Reconciliation and Eucharist and were given an invitation to renew their confirmation. They discussed the meaning of a Christian life and how to strengthen their relationship with Jesus and with others.

Youth retreats began about 10 years ago, when young people “saw what was happening to their parents, grandparents, older brothers and sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles,” Sister Mary Jo said. “They wanted to know why they couldn’t have one.”

Many who have attended a BCC retreat — now held from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon at St. Anthony Retreat Center in Kalihi Valley — belong to one of about 20 weekly cell groups. The groups, each with 10 or more members, gather to study the Sunday Scripture readings and to share their “walk in the faith” that week.

“The cell group is a sharing of life and Catholic faith,” Sister Mary Jo said. One does not have to make a retreat to join a group.

Each retreat is staffed by a “team” of BCC members. A team used to have about 25 members, but enthusiasm has more than doubled that size.

“It started simply and it has just grown,” said Sister Mary Jo.” We have about 60 doing the next one.”

About 30 team members spend two months planning the weekend’s food, lodging, music, clean up and support. During the retreat, the rest of the team comes in to cook, assist with the music, serve as greeters and ushers, park cars, carry luggage and assist in the dormitories.

Two team members are assigned to each of the 10 tables of retreatants. Others simply show up to offer support and encouragement.

“It is hard to keep people off the team because they all want to serve,” Sister Mary Jo said.

Meanwhile, others are assigned to pray for each new retreatant eight weeks before the weekend begins. In addition, all cell group members offer prayers, fast and make sacrifices for each retreat.

A conversion experience

During a retreat, the Holy Spirit and the sacraments work wonders, Sister Mary Jo said. People are changed by the “whole conversion experience.”

“We just encourage them to let God work,” she said. “The way they just open up and allow God to do whatever he wants in their lives is amazing.”

When people first arrive, they are often skeptical and guarded, she said. However, “they walk away on Sunday having met God and they take him home with them.”

“They know they are loved and they never have to be afraid of anything, because he is all-loving, all-forgiving,” Sister Mary Jo said.

The spiritual director has seen alcohol and drug dependencies kicked, marriages convalidated, and people return to the sacraments, some after decades away, and to active church life.

The retreat’s effects are especially powerful in young adults, she said.

“They suddenly wake up to the fact that they are missing something, so it makes radical changes in their lives,” she said.

They walk away from old ways, bad habits and troublesome friends “because of their more meaningful relationship with Jesus,” she said.

People also begin to spend more time in daily prayer.

“I see the joy and the peace in their lives,” she said, and the new ability to speak to the Lord they didn’t have before “because they didn’t know what to say.”

“Now they’ve met him,” she said.

‘It opened my heart’

Raul Perez, a parishioner at St. Jude Parish, Makakilo, made his first retreat in 1999, at a friend’s invitation, “to feel a closer relationship to God.”

“It really opened my eyes and opened my heart,” he said, giving him a deeper appreciation of God’s blessings.

“It changed me into a better father, a better husband and to be more serving … in the parish and the community,” he said. “I have become more prayerful and my family has become more prayerful.”

Perez’s wife Annabelle and their three children are members as well.

The president of the BCC for two years, Perez has served on more than 10 retreats and has seen his share of conversions.

“When they come in on Friday night, they are really reserved,” he said. “Usually, somebody has sent them. Throughout the weekend, you see a change in them, how they are touched by the Holy Spirit. The last day, they don’t want to leave.”

“It is one big family praying for each other,” he said.

Perez credits Hawaii’s Benedictines, the small monastic community in Waialua to which Sister Mary Jo belongs, as the strength behind God’s work in BCC.

“Without them, it would not work,” he said. “They open up a lot of people’s eyes and hearts.”

Perez said that BCC hopes in the future to have a cell group in every parish in Hawaii and to offer retreats on the neighbor islands.

The cost to attend a spirituality weekend, covering all meals and two night accommodations, is $60, but scholarships are available. For more information, call Sister Mary Jo McEnany at the Benedictine Monastery, at 637-7887.