The new guides for the Prayer and Life Workshop groups will be sent out next Saturday. The Sending Mass will be held at the Archdiocesan Sanctuary of Health and Peace at 5 PM. Everyone is invited to participate.

The guides of Father Eustáquio and Saint Joseph will be sent to lead the Prayer Workshop meetings in these locations. They are: Aline Silva de Oliveira, Geralda Teixeira Maia Souza, Irene Maria Aleixo Brasil, Janaína Bernardes Moreira, Zilda Maria Lopes Duarte, and Márcia Costa Moreira Sorrentino.

The Sending Forth Mass will be broadcast live on the Padre Eustáquio Channel on YouTube, so those who cannot attend in person are invited to join the celebration online.

What are the Prayer and Life Workshops?

The Prayer and Life Workshops are a service within the Church. They provide the faithful with a practical method for learning to pray, and to pray in an orderly, varied, and progressive way: from the first steps to the depths of contemplation.

Prayer, when brought to life in this way, achieves the humanizing dimension that our Founder speaks of. The brief history of the Workshops has demonstrated one reality: they possess a remarkable transformative efficacy.

First, the Workshop welcomes the participant and, in the light of the Word, introduces them to a complex process of reflection, prayer, the Gospel message, and analysis of their own life. In this context, the participant is imperceptibly drawn, almost without realizing it, into a life transformation. This is not a weekend conversion; it is a slow and evolutionary process over four months. The testimony of life is the factor that confers guarantee and credibility to the Workshops. And this transformative effectiveness, proclaimed by word of mouth, is the main reason for the rapid expansion of the Workshops.

Secondly, through silencing exercises, the nervous system becomes imbued with serenity, and peace reaches the depths of the soul through the experience of surrender. And so, through messages and exercises, most Workshop participants gradually arrive at:

• To free oneself from sadness and anguish;
• To heal from life's wounds;
• Overcoming feelings of guilt, insecurity, or inferiority;
• Finally, to regain emotional stability and the joy of living; the Prayer and Life Workshops enable the divine and the human to walk hand in hand.

Thirdly, the Workshop offers an extremely simple, yet effective, path to Christ-like sanctification: ceasing to be "myself" in my negative traits and assuming the positive traits of Jesus: patience, fortitude, meekness, love.