Many who have attended a Catholic Life in the Spirit Seminar have experienced God and the Holy Spirit in a way they had never done before.
The Catholic Life in the Spirit Seminar (CLSS) is an invitation to make or renew a deep personal commitment to Jesus Christ in openness to the Holy Spirit and His gifts. It serves as an introduction to a life in the power of the Holy Spirit. It provides teaching, guidance, and prayer leading to a new and deeper relationship with the Lord. Many parishioners and the community came and experienced the presence of the Lord, through praise and worship with community.
But more than a series of courses or lectures, the CLSS are a chance for Catholics who have found a fuller life in the Holy Spirit to come together with people who want to know more about that life, to share with them, and to help them take the first steps of a new life themselves. For this reason, the ministry that presents the
seminars is one of their most important elements.
The CLSS have a very limited goal. They are designed to be only the beginning, only the first step in a completely new way of life. For people to continue to grow and develop in this new life they need to come together with others who are living this same way to receive support and further teaching. For this reason, CLSS is presented in the context of a Christian community or prayer group where people are already living the life in the Spirit together. The participants completing the seminars should be brought into the life of these groups where they can receive the guidance and support they will need to go on with their new life.
A few things are necessary:
- Willingness to grow in personal holiness and to get rid of the sin.
- A laying aside of our plans and agenda and thirsting for God’s work.
The CLSS is designed to be an introduction to a new life in the Spirit that is lived with others. Experience shows that if a person does not make connection with a group of other people living this new life, the CLSS will not make a major difference in his life. The new life he has begun will fade away.
The CLSS all by themselves are not effective in the long run. More is needed. It is therefore only makes sense to think of the CLSS as one instrument in the life of some community or prayer group. The seminars are designed as an evangelistic teaching method which helps people enter the life of a community or prayer group. As such they have to be related in the right sort of way to the life of the community or prayer group they are part of.
