Formation : General Statement
Our Formation of Missionaries
The life of a Claretian Missionary in Formation of the U.S. Western Province is dedicated to growing in communion with the mind and heart of Christ. We follow our Congregation's Formation of Missionaries General Plan of Formation in the preparation and training of our members. Our 2006 Formation Handbook provides specific guidelines used for the formation of our missionaries. You are invited to review our handbook at the following link:
Formation Handbook (PDF)
1. Fundamental objective of our Formation of Missionaries
12. The objective of formation is to promote our growth in union and conformity with Christ, according to the Claretian charism in the Church, by means of a personalizing process, in each concrete situation and with openness to universality.
1.1. Conformity with Christ the Missionary
13. The fundamental objective consists of following Jesus Christ the Missionary until we become conformed with Him. In our formation, following Christ as set forth in the Gospel is our supreme rule. All other orientations and norms have meaning insofar as they help and prepare us to follow Christ in a communion of life and to go out into the world to proclaim the Good News to every creature. Our mission and hence the whole formative itinerary that prepares us for it must always spring from a real conformity with Christ the Evangelizer and from a close communion and friendship with Him, so that it will no longer be we who live, but Christ who truly lives in us. In this process, Mary, the Mother of Jesus and of the Church, the Formatrix of Apostles, plays an essential role. Hence, we commit ourselves to her that we may be conformed to the mystery of Christ and may cooperate with her in her maternal role in our apostolic mission. Only thus will we be able to become truly missionary men who are on fire with charity and spread its flames wherever we go.
1.2. According to the Claretian charism in the Church
14. Within the great variety of charisms, which the Spirit raises up in the Church, and in fellowship with them, we carry on the gift of grace granted to our Founder. We follow Christ in the likeness of the Apostles, as servants of the Word. Thus we form in the Church an Institute, which is truly and fully apostolic. In the Regulation our Founder wrote for the students, he pointed out that the missionaries' formation is oriented toward the glory of God, whom they should ask to make them fitting ministers of the word, in order to extend his name and spread his reign throughout the world. In it there already appears the missionary imprint that has characterized Claretian formation from its outset until today, an imprint which the Constitutions clearly capture. Our formation is for mission. Hence, mission is the key to all our formation and the nucleus for promoting new Claretian vocations, as well as the principle of discernment, of pedagogical incentive and of experimentation, throughout the process of incorporation into our Institute.
1.3. By means of a personalizing process
15. In our formative itinerary we try to re-create, with the help of the Spirit and as responsible and creative persons, the charism of Claret, persuaded that this will enable us to move forward in missionary community to achieve that personal fullness to which we have been called. Our formation is inspired in a notion of humankind as being open to God, to others and to the world.
1.4. In each concrete situation yet open to our universal mission
16. As missionaries, we are immersed in the diverse realities of the peoples and cultures in which we live, while at the same time maintaining our availability for the universal mission of the Congregation. Missionary community constitutes the environment par excellence of our formation process. While this missionary formation community should, both in its lifestyle and in the way it performs its ministry, so develop and unfold our original gift for serving the Church and the world that it becomes truly rooted in the conditions and needs of the local Church, it must also maintain its relationship with the rest of the Congregation, its insertion in the Church and its contact with the world.
2.1. Our Claretian identity (charismatic reference)
18. Our identity, described in an overall way in the documents of the Congregation, is clearly expressed in the Constitutions, which condense and transmit an experience of grace which the Spirit grants us and which begets a distinctive style of life and mission within the Church. The Constitutions are the immediate reference point of our formation process and the source from which the following pedagogical synthesis of our charism springs.
2.1.1. We are followers of Jesus Christ in the style of the apostles
19. We are followers of Jesus Christ, consecrated to the Father through the gift of the Spirit. For us, Jesus is the Christ and the Lord to whom we entrust our life. He is the Son and Envoy of the Father, He is Word made flesh of the Virgin Mary, He is the One Anointed by the Spirit to bring Good News to the poor, the Prophet powerful in works and words, the One who was obedient even to death and is the Risen One who continues living in the world. We have been granted the grace to represent in the Church his prophetic life, his vocation as herald of the Good News for all human beings, especially for the poor, the addressees and privileged subjects of the Kingdom that He lived and proclaimed.
20. We follow Jesus Christ in the manner of the apostles. Like them, we have been given the grace to live and to announce the Word, by re-presenting in the Church the virginity, poverty and obedience of Christ, and by sharing the hopes and sorrows of humankind, especially of the poor.
21. Among the elements emphasized in the Gospel, we pay special heed to the call to be perfect as our Father is perfect, to the commandment of love, to prayer, to the rule of apostolic life and to the beatitudes. These emphases entail as their foundation the unconditional acceptance of the person of Jesus and of the new order of values he proposes as the Kingdom. The centrality of the Kingdom in the message of Jesus becomes for us the fundamental criterion of discernment for our life and mission. It presupposes an unshakable faith in the God who calls us, an experience of our sonship in God, of becoming conformed with Christ the Evangelizer and of living our cordimarian sonship.
2.1.2. Formed by the Spirit in the forge of Mary's Heart
22. Our experience of apostolic life is only possible through the action of the Spirit who anointed Jesus, impelled the apostles to bear witness to His resurrection throughout the world and moves others to follow the same kind of life. This Spirit makes us sons of God and cries out "Abba" in our hearts. It is the Spirit who has raised up our Congregation as a gift for the Church, bestows on each of us the gift to follow Christ in apostolic community, anoints us to evangelize by giving us joy and missionary zeal, gathers us together in fraternal community and grants us a diversity of gifts for one common mission.
23. Like our Founder, we are aware that our own vocation as followers is shaped in the forge of Mary's heart. All of us can address her in the same terms that Claret used: You are well aware that I am your son and minister, formed by you in the forge of your mercy and love. I am like an arrow poised in your mighty hand. Thus, we feel strengthened to proclaim the Gospel and confront the evil that affects the persons and structures among which we live. This cordimarian dimension is essential in our missionary vocation. Hence, we must stress it in a special way in formation.
2.1.3 In missionary community
24. We live the vocation of disciples, followers and apostles in a missionary community. Our community is enriched with a diversity of charisms and ministries: We form a Congregation of priests, deacons, brothers and students who share the same vocation. All of us belong to the same community, fulfill the same mission and, in keeping with our own gift of order and the special role we perform in our Congregation, we all share the same rights and duties deriving from our religious profession.
2.1.4. Called to evangelize through the ministry of the Word
25. In close communion with its diverse ministries and charisms, the ministry of the word, through which we communicate the total mystery of Christ to humanity, is our special calling among the People of God. Collaboration in this ministry pertains to the very origins of our common life. We are a community called together in the Spirit for the announcement of the Gospel. For us, the Word of God is as essential to community, as community is to the Word of God. Hence, one of the core aspects of our formation is initiation and growth in the ministry of the word, understood as an authentic way of being, acting and signifying.
26. Mary lived this mystery in its fullness. We, too, under her maternal action learn to accept the Word, to embody it in a life-commitment and to communicate it with the same readiness and generosity that she did. The listening to, fulfillment, fraternal sharing and announcement of the Word, whether personally or as a community, are basic moments of the dynamics of the Word that must be present in all stages of formation.
2.1.5 In the universal mission of the Church
27. Our mission acquires its meaning within the universal mission of the Church. Throughout the ages, the Church, impelled by the Spirit, has endeavored to fulfill the mission charge of Jesus: "Go into the world and proclaim the Good News to every creature." Its mission consists of prolonging the saving mission of Christ, by evangelizing all peoples through witness and word. We make this universal mission our own through our distinctive missionary charism. We have been called to communicate the integral mystery of Christ to human beings. We fulfill this charge by raising up and consolidating communities of believers, wherever the need is most urgent, timely and effective, not allowing ourselves to be tied down to our native land, but rather being docile to the Spirit and obedient to mission.
2.1.6. In keeping with the demands, options and preferential recipients of our mission
28. In response to the demands of our mission and to the challenges of our time, we have opted for an evangelization that is missionary, inculturated, prophetic and liberating, from the viewpoint of the poor and needy, and that aims at multiplying evangelizing leaders. These options qualify our service of the Word and, logically, our style of formation. Based on these options, we assign a privileged place to a missionary proclamation that is addressed to the non-Christian world and to de-christianized groups, to the poor, to new evangelizers, to youth and to the family, according to the differing situations in the places where we are evangelizing. All of these demands, options and preferences must energize our formation process.
2.2. Formation as a process (pedagogical reference)
29. Our formation is based on the pedagogy that God himself used with his people, on the itinerary that Jesus followed with his disciples and on the action of the Spirit in the Church and in the world.
It is based on a Christian vision of humans, understood as beings created in the image and likeness of God, wounded by sin and renewed by grace, called to universal fellowship and fraternity, immersed in history and society, graced with a particular vocation that unfolds progressively in conscious and free response to the inspirations of the Spirit. For us, Jesus Christ is the New Man, the only one who fully illumines our human strivings and fulfillment, and is the origin, way and goal of every authentic path to humanization.
30. On these bases we understand formation as a process whereby we keep assimilating, in a conscious and harmonious manner, the gospel ideal as our Founder lived it, in the daily reality of our life and mission. In this sense, the aim of formation is to actualize what already exists in us as a vocational gift bestowed on us by God. The discovery and development of our own vocational charism, of the possibilities and capacities we have received from God, begets in each of us an attunement and progressive acceptance of the Claretian charism and project of life.
© Copyright 2006 - Claretian Missionaries of the Western Province. All Rights Reserved.
