2/5/2022
You have asked at one time or another about my Prayer and Life Workshop Ministry and I thought I would share just a bit with you about it. On a separate sheet of paper, I have included the text of an email I send to people who are interested in learning more about the Prayer and Life Workshops. It is a great program, founded, in 1984, by Father Ignacio Larrañaga, a Capuchin priest, writer and evangelizer. Father Ignacio is considered by many a “modern day prophet” or a “21st century mystic”. Father Ignacio died in 2013. Many of the PLW Guides that have accompanied me on my journey to becoming a Guide actually met Father Ignacio.
I discovered the program when I was working in Puerto Rico in the Fall of 2018. I was seeking an English-speaking bible study during the week and stumbled across PLW. God had answered my prayers. I attended the sessions and each week I realized these sessions were transforming my life. My heart was on fire, and I felt God’s presence and love like never before. I had been feeling God’s call and fearing it at the same time. What was he asking of me? What was he wanting me to do? Would I be able to answer that call and say Here I am Lord? Half-way through PLW, I knew this is what God was calling me to do and I said YES! I set out to become a Guide and this past December 2021, at my Sending Forth Mass I became a PLW Guide.
Below is the first reading we share with the PLW participants. Hosea Chapter 11: 1-4 offers us words of great tenderness, not like those of a father, but like those of a mother. God is like a mother who picks up her child off the ground and holds her closest to her cheek to caress and feed her. While these words of Hosea refer directly to Israel, they are entirely applicable to each of us.
Hosea 11:1-4
11: 1 When Israel was a child, I loved him,
and out of Egypt I called my son.
2 The more I called them,
the more they went from me;
they kept sacrificing to the Baals,
and offering incense to idols.
3 Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk,
I took them up in my arms;
but they did not know that I healed them.
4 I led them with cords of human kindness,
with bands of love.
I was to them like those
who lift infants to their cheeks,
I bent down to them and fed them.
We tell participants when we prayerfully read God’s Word it is God speaking to us. We respond to God through prayer. When reading the Word, we tell Participants to replace proper names, such as Israel and Ephraim with their own name to make the Word more personal to them. Go back and read it very slowly and put your name in for Israel and Ephraim.
This reading touched my heart so profoundly and speaks to me of God’s love for me. When I first heard it in the Prayer and Life Workshop while in Puerto Rico, it reminded me of one of the first times I understood God’s love. I was riding to work on the Washington DC Metro, and I noticed a mother and her infant child sitting two rows up diagonal from me on the left. I fixed my gaze on this mother and her child she was holding in her arms for some time. The child was facing his/her mother and they were looking at each other for some time when all of a sudden, the child reached up and lovingly caressed his/her mother’s check.
I was touched by what I had witnessed, and tears rolled down my cheeks. I longed for that intimacy I too had with Cynthia when she was an infant. Cynthia was between five and six years old when this incident on the Metro happened. After pondering what I had seen and God’s role in it, I pulled out my day planner I used for work and wrote down what I felt including the revelation that a mother’s love for her child and her child’s love for her is the closest we come to understanding God’s love for us. I had already realized how a mother’s love was different when Cynthia was born but had not connected it to God’s love for me. God is the mother, and I am the child. At this time in my life, I had never read Hosea 11:1-4 let alone know who Hosea was. I also had never seen the Mother of God of Tenderness icon.
As you go about your everyday activities, consider all the things that remind you of God’s love. Practice perceiving God’s love in everything. Take into account every pleasant thing you see, feel, hear, or taste is a special gift; a message of love that God, your Father, expressly sends to you. Consider that on each of these occasions, he is telling you “I love you very much.” When you become aware of these moments, respond to Him “Thank you Father, I love You too.”
I will close with this prayer, from the PLW Encounter Prayer Handbook
#65 Face to Face
Day after day, Lord of my life, may I remain before You, face to face.
With clasped hands, I will stay before You, Lord of all the worlds, face to face.
In this world that is Yours, in the midst of the exhaustion, of the turmoil, of the conflicts, of the impassioned multitude, I must remain before You, face to face.
And when my duty in this world is finished, O King of Kings, alone and in silence, I will remain before You, face to face.
AMEN.
With all of Christ’s Love
Dora
✝️🙏❤️
What is PLW?
- It is A Prayer Workshop where participants learn to deepen skills in the art of prayer.
- A Life Workshop where participants overcome anxieties through healing and reconciliation; acceptance and surrender thereby resulting in peace and serenity
What are the Fruits of the Workshop?
- A transformative experience as you develop a relationship with God.
- Established daily prayer habit of praying with scriptures through more than a dozen different prayer methods.
- Life tools that move you closer to living like Jesus; and
- A deepening commitment to the Church.
Do you want to:
- deepen your skills in the art of prayer?
- establish a habit of praying daily with scriptures?
- learn about and practice more than a dozen different prayer methods?
- learn about life tools that move you closer to living like Jesus?
If you answered any of these questions with YES, then PLW is for you!
The Prayer and Life Workshops is where everyday people like you and I are transformed as we develop a deep personal relationship with God. Here are two testimonials of a husband and wife who participated in the last session:
I cannot begin to express how much Prayer & Life Workshops has helped me with my prayer life. For quite some time, I had known I was missing one-on-one time with God. I was praying the rosary on the go, listening to The Bible in a Year podcast, and participating in a weekly Adoration Hour, yet I longed to go deeper spiritually. Prayer & Life Workshops was the answer to my prayers. It gave me the tools and structure that I needed. My husband took the workshop with me, and that was a double blessing as it also brought us closer spiritually. It was great to share our prayer time with each other. I wish I had learned this prayer method many years ago! Thank you! – Karen Osman
For years I have promised myself that I would get into the habit to pray and not just pray but actually learn how to have a powerful and impactful prayer life. The Prayer & Life Workshops was my answer. Learning so many prayer methods has given me the tools to really engage with God. My Faith has been strengthened and through prayer I feel I have finally grown closer to our Lord. – Karl Osman
You can learn more about:
- the workshops for adults at Adults – TOVPIL,
- what and who we are at WHAT WE ARE – TOVPIL
- and you can learn about the Vatican’s approval and resolution of the PLW here The Vatican and the PLW – TOVPIL.
Yes! Saint Pope John Paul the II approved the Prayer and Life Workshops and gave confirmation and recognition of the prayer & life workshops as a private International Association of laypeople of Pontifical law with a judicial personality according to canons 298-329 of the code of canonical law.