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Our first obligation to our novices and seminarians is spiritual and comes from mentoring and shared experience. A vocation is threefold: a call to being, a call to living, and a call to doing. Many secular professionals receive training in the last of these only, as it might only need to be. However, those called, and consecrated, “set apart,” for ministry or prophetic prayer, need to be formed in all three aspects of their vocation, and formed, not just trained.
They need to see who they are, where they come from, and where they are going in relation first to their baptismal initiation into the life of Grace in Jesus Christ made in God’s image. They need to explore the very movement of the spirit in their lives past, present, and future: their joys and hurts, fears and courage, successes and challenges. The need for learning to really pray is so important here.
Next they need to understand how they can best live who they are in the world. Are they called to know God’s joy as a single person, in married relationship, or in celibate prophecy? This aspect is sometimes taken for granted, especially in Churches where the choice is made for you. Celibacy and ministry are not exclusively bound together from our church’s perspective. A deeper call to spiritual direction, prayer, and meditation is where this aspect of the call can be heard.
Finally, adequate preparation then, and only then, can be given to the particular requirements of ministry: theology, counseling theory, liturgy, evangelization/preaching. A deepening of the sacramental life of Grace is a primary nourishment here along with mentored practical ministry practice.
Evident through all three of these stages is a recognition of the importance of the religious community into which we are born and live and grow. Our life of Grace is not formed in a vacuum. From catechism to religious/monastic formation, to seminary preparation, all is done in the context of community. The Holy Spirit works in us as it does in the Trinity through the bonds of loving relationship. The very life of the sacraments is about God’s revelation to us and the Church through us and the Church, and the experience of the faith communities of the Holy Scriptures.
In our small church and Order, with our limited resources, I think we do a good job of recognizing and implementing these important elements. I have been humbled and impressed at how our novices and seminarians have grown over the past year and what I have also learned from them. That is the joy of the difference between professional preparation and religious/ministerial formation, it is always a shared journey that goes both ways.
2 comments:
Amen! I completely agree with everything you wrote here. I would just add one thing -- formation does not end with baptism, confirmation, ordination, or religious profession -- we are called to life-long formation. Of course, catechumens, novices, and seminarians undergo a more intense and focused formation, which is their primary vocation while they are in that state, and those who are established as laypeople, professed religious, or ordained clergy have as their primary vocation the particular ministries to which they are called. However, to support them in those ministries, even those who have completed their "primary formation" should continue to undergo ongoing formation, since God has a way of calling us to new ministries as we progress in the life of grace.
Never a dull moment in the service of Christ. How I long for dull moments! ;-)
Double Amen, Tim. As Augustine said about life in the monastery, it is a school in the Lord's service. We are always learning.
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