SFO International Council - Weekly edition
Volume: 3 - N. 33 - 1997 - August - III
From: Letter to the Assistants, 1997, N. 3
Excerpt from Ongoing Formation in the Order of Friars Minor, 1995, Chapter II, adapted to the Secular Franciscans.
Secular Franciscan formation must attend to the human, Christian and Franciscan growth of each member. These various aspects of growth will develop together in real life even though they are theoretically distinct.
The need for ongoing formation can be adduced on many grounds. Here we shall indicate three significant motivations, which follow the three aspects just indicated and which may fruitfully be looked at in more depth.
1) Anthropological reasons for ongoing formation
Human life is a journey towards maturity, which is reached by means of a continuous process of formation. Nobody is capable of stopping short along the way, because life impels us forward from within. Each human being is equipped with potentialities which need to develop, grow and mature in a balanced and responsible fashion in every aspect of life. Ongoing formation begins when a person engages in a stance of openness towards self, in order to understand and accept oneself, of openness towards the other, towards society, to the world and to God. The progressive development of one's capacity for constructive openness affords the best guarantee of one's balanced maturity.
Since we must live within history, we are in need of ongoing formation in the sense of a reliable knowledge of events and a critical consciousness. Each person exists within the complex and ever-changing web of reality, and within it the self comes to realization through relationships with other selves and with society. This inter-relation makes possible, and stimulates, the capacity to think, to achieve a knowledge of reality and creatively to imagine how that reality could and should be. Faced with the breadth and depth of reality, we can perfect our critical consciousness by probing beyond the mere appearance of phenomena to their causes and consequences. This entire process of knowing and maturing belongs to ongoing formation, which becomes an indispensable accompaniment to our journey with history.
Appropriate autonomy and freedom as well as a good psychological equilibrium, which provide the basis for the affective life of the individual, are the result of a sustained effort of formation. It is important, for this reason, that every Secular Franciscan be in a position to accept his own existence and his vocation as something that is authentic, beautiful and good. The path towards full human maturity, which is a preliminary to gospel living, is a process of continuous enrichment not only in spiritual values but also in psychological, cultural and social ones.
Professional activities demand ceaseless updating. In a world in which the advances of technology are becoming increasingly rapid and the professions are becoming more minutely specialized, it has become part of the human condition to pursue updating and inservice training to take account of new data and new advances. Professional formation fosters personal fulfilment and develops our gifts so that we can put them at the service of others. It also sets us in solidarity with the other workers whose life we share and enables us to respond to the needs of the present day with competence and expertise.
2) Theological reasons for ongoing formation
"He grew in wisdom, age and grace" ( Lk 2:52).
Jesus of Nazareth arrived at the moment of his public mission through a process of maturing of his human, intellectual and spiritual dimensions. The greater portion of his life was spent in silence and hiddenness. It was in the quiet round of daily life that he developed integrally, in simplicity, industry and humility. And all through his public life he was attentive to the will of his Father, who was leading him towards the fulfilment of his mission.
The Secular Franciscan needs to plumb the depths of his vocation and to interiorize it, to allow it to grow in all its aspects towards maturity, and to grow steadily in awareness of the mission to which he has been called. Each person needs to open himself to renewal and to grow within the ordinariness of the daily round, in silence, in working faithfully and in listening to the voice of God, in order to hear what God wants and to want what pleases him.
"Turned towards the Father's heart" ( Jn 1,18).
Jesus was always continually and totally "journeying" towards the Father. He is not only the Word which is close to the Father and oriented to him, not only "Word made flesh", and therefore not only response and participation, not only discourse and experience, but also - and especially - the Word which is directed totally towards the Father's heart. His life knew only one direction, one purpose: to be with the Father and to act on behalf of the Father.
The Secular Franciscan, loved by God, cannot but have the same orientation and purpose. The fundamental option of his life is to "glorify the name of God" (Jn 12,27), and his prayer is: "Hallowed be your Name". To glorify the Name means to allow the face of God to shine through one's existence. This is the goal of their profession and of a formation which should continually help the brother or sister to make of self a gift and to be a revelation of God to others.
(to be continued)