What is the Prayer and Life Workshop?
The Prayer and Life Workshops are a new form of Evangelization; alive and with a greater positive vision than what has previously been available.
It is a more vibrant and vivid presentation of Jesus; a true adaptation of the needs of our present society.
Its emphasis is on Love transforming power rather than on fear and punishment. That is why unequivocally we say that Prayer and Life Workshops is the answer to today’s world.
Key Points of the Workshop
- Based on the Bible: The Prayer and Life Workshops is an evangelization method that is wholly based on the Word. The central focus on each Session is reading and meditating on the Word. During four months, for each day of the week, the participants are given texts from the New and Old Testaments so that they can meditate and pray them in their homes, using the Brief Guidelines to meditate and live the Word.
- Christ-centered: In the Workshops Jesus Christ is the beginning, the center and the end, in order that the participants feel, act, and love like Jesus did, with the eternal question in their hearts: What would Jesus do in my place.
- Nursery of Apostolic vocation: Every experience ends in a testimonial. The Workshop not only wants to be a school of formation but an apostolic school as well: in such a way that the participants, once constituted into disciples and friends of Jesus, participate directly in the priestly, prophetic and regal mission of Jesus Christ and that wherever they make themselves present, by their conduct and deeds they plant the Kingdom of God. In this fashion, the Workshops are an instrument of revitalization for the local Church.
- Exclusively a lay service: The Workshops, convinced that only with total autonomy they would be able to have a mature laity, opted from its beginning to have a lay government: giving it the entire responsibility to organize and govern the Workshops world wide. Being eminently a lay service, the Workshops have always firmly insisted in maintaining fluid and cordial relations with the parish priests and Bishops.
- Practical and experimental character: The Workshop is not a doctrine; neither is it a theory or theology. It works following the orientations of life and their applications. It is an experimental pedagogy, applied both in the Session and in the weekly practice. Praying does not consist in an intellectual reflection… it is a vital activity and things in life are learned by living them and putting them into practice. Due to this practical aspect we speak of Workshop, because as in a workshop one learns by practice and practicing what is learned; in our case, by praying we learn to pray.
- Step by step prayer activity – adapted to the person: Praying, while a grace is also art. For this reason, it is subject to a methodical and progressive learning process. That is why we have made every effort to place in the internal organization of the Workshops, clear objectives, a progressive pedagogy, clear contents, and lots of discipline.
A liberating and healing Workshop made possible through the knowledge of God and of oneself: Through the life experience of Surrender, the participant nears a profound peace; and through messages and exercises, the participant slowly is able to liberate himself from sadness and anxiety; to heal all wounds; to surpass fears and complexes, while recuperating the meaning of life and the joy of living. - Transformation enlightened by the Word: The workshop takes the participant and enlightened by the Word, introduced him into a complex framework of reflection, prayer, evangelical message and a self analysis of one’s life. In this context, the participant, without realizing it, is driven into a vital transformation. Good and evil are born in the heart. The workshop invades the heart and transforms it into a bastion of harmony, serenity and peace. Once this heart is converted, the gifts are radiated to the family and from the family to the society. Whoever transforms a heart, transforms the world.
- Commitment with the poor: Christ wanted to identify himself in a preferential way with the needy of the world (Mathew 25, 31-46). The needy are the privileged place where God manifests himself. The Workshops wish to do what Jesus did, those that he preferred will be the ones we preferred: his objectives will be our objectives. We also want to descend from the mountain of prayer and make ourselves present with word and presence, preferably a midst the poor and needy, in order to defend the weak, liberate the captives and announce a year of grace and salvation as stated in Isaiah.
- Promotion of Gospel values.