"Thousands of people have recovered joy and the
enchantment with life".
Prayers and Life Workshops - Father Ignacio LarraƱaga
What are the Prayer and Life Workshops?
The Prayer and Life Workshops are an ecclesial movements officially recognised by the Church. It offers a form of evangelization that is more alive and with a new positive vision.
It is a vibrant and active presentation of Jesus with a greater adaptation towards the necessities of our present society and what people really need, with its emphasis on Love’s transforming power.
The workshops are a service to the Chruch. But this service has a very precise goal : to teach others to pray in an orderly and progressive manner, in the sense that participants progress from the simplest experience of beginners to the heights of contemplation.
Christians, in general, reflect a good deal on the Word of God, but they are not taught how to pray, at least not in a systematic and practical manner.
The workshops do this through a course of fifteen two-hour weekly sessions. Rather than theoretical, the source is concrete and practical. It is designed precisely as a workshop where the participants learn by working and work by learning.
Our movement teaches prayer by praying.
Based on the Bible:
The Prayer and Life Workshops method is wholly based on the Word of God. The central focus in each session is reading and meditating on the Word. During four months, for each day of the week, the participants are given text 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 centre and the end in order that the participants feel, act and love likeJesus did, with the eternal question in their hearts – What would Jesus do in my place?
Nursary of Apostolic vocation:
Every experience ends in a testamonial. 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 whereever 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 s government: giving it the entire responsibility to organize and govern the workshops worldwide. Being eminently a lay service, the Workshops have always firmly insisted in maintaining fluid and cordial relations with the parish priests and Bishops.
Step by step prayer activity – adapted to the person:
Praying – while a gift of grace is also an 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 methodology and practice, clear contents and lots of discipline.
A life Workshop:
The Workshops are not a doctrine: neither are they theory nor theology. They work following the orientations of life and their applications. Living the life experiences throughout the course, combined with the prayer methods, enables a deeper spiritual growth than with either one alone.
A liberating and healing Workshop:
Through the life experience of Surrender, the participant nears a profound peace; and through messages and exercises the participant slowly is able to liberate themself from sadness and anxiety; to heal all wounds; to surpass fears and complexes, while recuperating the meaning of life and the joy of living.