Cursillo-related Movements > Youth Movements >Days with the Lord
Days with the Lord
The "Days with the Lord" began in 1966 at the Ateneo de Manila High School in Quezon City in the Philippines. It was designed by a group of young Jesuits, under the lead of Father Francisco Glover, s.j., to address the needs of their students which were not answered by the annual senior's retreat. It is a crossbreed between the Cursillo weekend and the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises. At that time, much of the elite of the Catholic church in the Philippines had turned "de colores" and so did most of the Days' founding fathers who had been favorably impressed by their cursillo experience. So the Jesuit team created a spiritual session for their students inspired by the Ignatian retreat but with a "cursillo" format.
As in Cursillo, the basic objective of the Days' three-day workshop is to enable the participant to live a religious experience (not hear about but live an experience): to realize more intimately the personal love of Christ, so that the participant may be disposed to respond freely to the invitation of that love. Contrary to the Exercices, the Days is not based on silence and solitude, it unrolls in an atmosphere of informality, of joy, of camaraderie, of sharing and of Christian love in action. In lieu of a retreat master leading to meditation, a dozen of young people joyfully share their personal experiences with the participants. Days with the Lord has also other cursillo features, such as the palancas, the mananitas, the disco and the fourth day.
However the content of the Days with the Lord is different from the Cursillo weekend. The structure follows the Spiritual Exercises, not the rollos.
The Movement has 45 Communities in the Philippine, and 3 in the United States (San Francisco, Los Angeles & New York). Estimates in 1996 put the count, for 35 years worth of Days sessions, to be around 25,000 "Dazers" worldwide. A great number of them have sites on the Internet. The Dazers greeting is: "basta ikaw, lord" (Just for you, Lord)
Our resumé is inspired by the Official Homepage of the Days with the Lord Spiritual Workshop World Wide.