CHALLENGES TO RELIGIOUS FORMATORS IN TODAY’S LOCAL AND INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT
What are some challenges to religious formators in today’s local and international context? Basically it is that of having the most wonderful ideals and the difficulty of living up to them. There is the ideal of community life where everything is shared. There is supposed to be common prayer, meals, recreation, and even property. But the reality is far from the ideal. Just like people outside the monastic walls, some religious prefer other activities to prayer and they will engage in them sacrificing prayer time. At 6:30 pm my favorite TV show is running but that is also the community’s scheduled prayer time. Would I rather miss prayer than the show? A conflict emerges inside me. My formator-self is going against my normal person in the world-self. The ideal of being assiduous in prayer is compromised.
Letting go of worldly attachments to follow Christ is a challenge. In this digital age some formators cannot survive without their gadgets. It is their link. It connects them with loved ones and so many other things. Gone are the days when only the breviary and some clothes is what a formator needs.
Then there is the challenge of living with others. The formator has to share life with individuals and each of them is a microcosm. Although there is a formation program, it is never a one size fits all arrangement. There has to be order in the community but also respect for the uniqueness of each person who has good qualities that can be developed but also life issues that have to be faced and addressed.
Since the formation house is not a world in itself there is also the challenge of relating with the society and with social issues that confront not only the individual but the nation. How to combine religious formation with the reality outside is quite a balancing act. There has to be immersion but too much of it might endanger vocation. The absence of immersion on the other hand can spoil the formand into thinking that he is the center of the world and all his needs have to be addressed. In the immersion area the formand may realize how blessed he is inside the religious house. Whereas many people lack even the basic need of fresh air inside their houses that are so small and are located in the midst of other makeshift dwellings. The formand can also experience the reality of injustice and become angry about it. But not just to be angry. He might slowly emerge as a committed and articulated defender of the rights of the oppressed and this is what may bring about in him the peace of restlessness.
Probably, the prophetic role for a formator is the most challenging because it demands a coherent life to live what is announced. If the formator has to preach and teach about simplicity of life, then he has to live it. If he teaches about the preferential option for the poor, he has to be sincere about it and is manifest in his relations of having more acquaintances from the lowest levels of society than from the rich. Fortunately, he can feel the sentiments of the poor from his own formands, for a good number of them come from the poor sector of society. He can visit their homes and experience how the formand was able to grow in love of Christ and neighbour despite the unfavourable conditions he has had to endure. Just staring at the walls of the house displayed with pictures can indicate how skinny the man was before he entered the formation house. Or if the formand belongs to a well off family a house visit indicates how prosperous looking he was in his former environment with many comforts life brought him.
To the rich and to the poor, the formator can be prophetic. He can encourage the rich to live a simple life in order to have something to share with the poor and he can warn the poor not to spoil himself with things he could not afford in his former way of life because, in religious life, the rich are not to become miserable while the poor are not to become puffed up with pride. For it may happen that the poor in the formation house cannot travel anymore without being chauffeured by the driver. Whereas in his former life, he had to walk for miles to reach his destinations. On the other hand, the rich have to endure many discomforts. Before he had his own car and now he does not even have a bicycle.
Fr. Peter A. Casiño,
Order of St. Augustine - (The Philippines)
Taken from:
“Fire & Water”. The official Bullettin of the Religious Discernment Group.
(Issue 21. March 2019) – The Philippines
