Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Accompany the Candidates in formation!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Our Capuchin Franciscan formation is on-going and it makes one to conform to Christ in a spiritual journey. This spiritual journey of the candidate is accompanied by the able formators. The formators assist the candidate to give a strong response to the call of God. The candidate being accompanied by the formatore is helped to know the ways of Gods grace and presence in his life. Through all the formation that the candidate receives is all geared up to know himself, learn and assimilate the spirit of the founder and capuchin of Order. This process of discoverving himself is on going and never ending. Our Capuchin provinces all over the world I am quite sure is giving importance and priority to the initial and on going formation. The formation of the candidate must prepare him to totally consecrate and surrender to the Lord whom he is going to serve. During the formation the accompanying formators should help the candidate to experience God in their journey and allow them to express that experience in various ways. The candidate with his availabiity and positive disposition to God and formator opens himself to a spiritual realm.

Today the Provinces must be extra careful as the candidates come from various challenged background which we are aware but may not be able to handle. These backgrounds can be very challenging and sometimes could drain our energies in gving and forming them according the mind of the Order. The age old values in the Church and Order are still holding water and will never lose their importance but the candidates come from society where these values are compromised. The formators will have to walk an extra mile with the candidates in re-emphasising on the values. Today we know from experience that those who come have different intentions altgoether from those of the Order. How best can we can initiate them to accept the intentions of the Church and the Order? The candidates should not be forced to do something but taught to love and accept something self giving and not self centeredness. A second plague that poses serious challenges to the formation of religious today is the half-baked education received by candidates who join us. Before now, it was taken for granted that candidates who aspire to the religious life will be a little above average in the cognitive domain. Unfortunately, due to the rot in our educational system, which is caused by bad governance, it has become difficult to see candidates with good results and being confident enough to defend such results. In most instances, young men come in with excellent results and yet are not able to communicate in simple, straightforward English. Instead of formators spending more time and energy imparting knowledge on the theology of the religious Life, Evangelical Counsels, Scripture and a few other core courses, more energy is being expended on secular courses like English Language, which are supposed to be pre-requisites to these religious courses.



There is need to pay attention to the work of formation because we are living in very secularized society. In other words, we have to respond to the signs of time. If a Congregation's new members are allowed to do no more than inherit the past, then the potency of the founding charism will be stifled.  Finally, the people entrusted with the work of formation must be men of prayer and integrity, ready to teach by words and action. They should realize that growth into religious life is a gradual process. They must also allow themselves to also be continually formed, since formation is an on-going process.

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