Alfonso Carrasco Rouco
“San Dámaso” Faculty of Theology
“Thus permanent formation
is a requirement of the priest's own faithfulness to his ministry, to his very
being. It is love for Jesus Christ and fidelity to oneself. But it is also an act of love for the People of God, at
whose service the priest is placed.”[1]
In fact, ongoing formation is a call to experience with awareness one’s
own personal identity, renewed by the vocation received from the Lord. Therefore
it is a reaffirmation of hope, of life’s wealth, of love and meaning, providing
the foundations for one’s life and determining one’s own ordination. At the
same time however it is an invitation to be vigilant, to answer God’s gift with
one’s own freedom and not to take for granted the fulfilment of one’s own
existence and mission.
In this sense, ongoing formation, experienced as the expression and
means for a better following of Christ, is called upon to contribute to the
personal growth of each person in achieving maturity.
This path towards the fullness of one’s own humanity is unavoidable for
the life of a priest and his ministry since, in a certain sense, it is the
primary expression of his faith in Jesus Christ, who “offers the most complete, genuine and perfect
expression of what it means to be human”[2],
delivers from evil and accompanies the life of he who follows him towards the
fulfilment of his destiny. If a priest were unable to
acknowledge the results of God’s gifts in his life, his gift of himself and the
achievement of his mission would be weakened. The human novelty brought by the
Gospel would also be difficult to achieve within his ministry; the experienced
testimony of mercy and redemption he announces would be poorer, as well as his
capability to understand and receive the faithful’s requests and emergencies
and to enlighten and accompany their hopes and difficulties, their pain and
happiness.
This personal growth of priests, obviously takes place in the daily
implementation of his mission, that cannot be separated from his fulfilling his
own vocation, from remembering God’s love, from the personal and sacramental
relationship with Him, from announcing the Gospel, from being close to the
lives of the faithful in all circumstances, especially painful ones. In fact,
only the fulfilment of actions makes manifest the profound truth of personal
faith and vocation; what is human is really understood, redeemed and fulfilled
through the Lord Jesus and the encounter with Him.
This experience is essential for priests, for their lives and their
missions. This is why meditation is so important, as is an effort to understand
and an intelligent judgement of one’s own pastoral experience, and ongoing
formation is also addressed at this. This personal development in fact, is not
simply spontaneous, it becomes paralyzed if separated form personal life
experience, but also slowed down if this experience is not accompanied by an
intelligence that understands it from a perspective of faith and with the help
of the brethren. The absence of this authentically fraternal dimension, in
which it is possible to share and help one another to understand the meaning of
one’s personal and pastoral experience, would dim the meaning of ongoing
formation – addressed at improving and reviving the charisma received by each
priest[3]
- and would diminish its fecundity.
On the contrary, if ongoing formation really pays attention to the lives
of priests, it also has an extremely positive effect on relations between the
priests and the faithful. In this manner it becomes easier to better experience
the priests’ unity with and closeness to all those, lay and ordained, with whom
they share with greater awareness the path of faith and the gift of themselves
to the Lord, the hope of the redeeming message for their own lives in all
circumstances. This experienced unity, real accompanying, authentic communion
in following Christ, will in turn facilitate personal growth, making it
possible with the help and the gifts received from everyone, which for an
isolated person would prove impossible and this applies to priests too.
The Lord, in fact, wishes the gifts bestowed upon everyone to benefit
all others, so that in unity with the Church, all its members and obviously
priests too may achieve “to
mature manhood, (…) to the extent of the full stature of Christ”[4].