What is ´formation´?

Embarking on an interior journey

If you have a vocation toward religious life or the priesthood, you will soon begin hearing the word “formation.” Formation will become a priority in your life. But, just what is formation?

It is like a road map showing you the path you have chosen to follow, as you board on a passionate internal trip. You will understand many things. The first will involve your education as a person, which means, your knowledge, your ability to have relationships, and your maturity to assume risks, frustrations, and whatever life brings. Then there is your intellectual education, which includes academic and theological studies.

The formation of your spirituality is very important. It begins, of course, with your own inclinations and your way of relating to God and helping that relationship to grow, with a life of prayer.
If you have chosen a vocation within a religious congregation, you will also have to familiarize yourself with the history, rules, and charism of that congregation, since they will become your way of life and the manner in which you live your vocation.

It is a long and often difficult process because it requires plenty of obedience, which is neither blind nor is it naïvely submissive. Instead it is listening to what God wants from you within the association or institution you have selected and where God wants to show you God’s path.

It means that many times you might have to give up your own individual plans to live in community. But it does not mean you will give up your freedom or your personality, rather that you will conform these into what God wants from you. The objective of formation is that your personality and spirituality are enriched and you become everything God wants you to be.

Each congregation or organization has its own formation program, in which they normally share content and study with other people in formation for the academic part, with an intense follow-up and spiritual complement through dialogue with a person of authority in the congregation or association.
What is required from you is an openness to listening, plenty of effort and determination in the work, and a lot of sincerity in sharing your life. A lack of honesty or transparency will only take you on the wrong path and finally to unhappiness. And God wants you to be happy and cheerful in the path you have selected.