The International Congress which we have celebrated has been, no doubt, a moment of grace for Consecrated Life in the Church.  Among many other things, because it has allowed us to meet and to know one another; to listen, to share and to reflect together; to pray and celebrate together the gift of our common vocation.  Seeing the different faces, listening to the different languages and having an intuition of the great cultural differences of the participants who were present, several times, I exclaimed, spontaneously, praising the Lord for the gift of so many brothers and sisters[1] and for their differences, since they are gifts from God and riches for those who know how to accept them.

But the Congress was not a goal, an end, but a stage of the long and, some times, also tiresome journey which consecrated life is following these “delicate and hard” times[2] .  The Congress was not closed on November 27, 2004.  The true Congress was precisely beginning on that day. Now, in this hour of  “tranquility” and at a just distance of that celebration, it is up to us not only to draw up a balance but also to take up the challenges that the Congress has launched to the participants and to respond to them through  adequate means, becoming in this way Samaritan women and Good Samaritans in the most diverse cultural, social and religious contexts in which we find ourselves.

I have been asked to speak about formation during these times of Refoundation in the light of the Congress.  With pleasure, but not without fear, I have accepted this task.  Pleasure, because formation is something in which I really believe and to which I dedicated many years of my life and I continue to dedicate many of my best energies.  Fear, because, besides the complexity of the theme, the Congress did not directly treat Formation, something which has caused some surprise if we keep in mind that “the renewal of religious institutes, fundamentally, depends on the formation of its members”[3], and we are the ones who say and write that from the Formation that we receive and give, depends our present and our future, but above all, because on it depends the significance of our life as consecrated persons.

Counting on your understanding and beginning from an attentive reading of everything which was said in the Congress, I will try to point out some challenges  with which Formation is faced today, without any pretension to be exhaustive, among other things, because as I already mentioned, formation was not a theme directly treated in the Congress.   

The development of these challenges will be preceded by pointing out some basic principles of Formation.  I will end my presentation by referring to some methodological notes which I believe are important when we have to respond to the above mentioned challenges.

1. Some basic principles of Formation 

Formation to consecrated life is going through a difficult moment and, at the same time, one filled with opportunities.  Up until a short time ago, we limited ourselves to stable and fixed models, far from the dynamic paradigms demanded by a reality in continuous and rapid evolution.  Today, we feel the need of maintaining ourselves on the furrows, already traced by the charismatic and formative tradition of our Institutes, but we also feel the need to open new paths and to reconsider our models and formative processes. 

We have journeyed a long way in the field of formation, particularly in the stages of initial formation.  One of the most significant achievements of the last decades in this field has been the passing from an educational model of identification with some ideals or assimilation of doctrinal and practical contents, to the concept of Formation as a personal process of growth.  This can constitute a good starting point so that we can continue, without losing courage or becoming weak, the search for new formative itineraries, which will lead our Institutes to a renewed vocational fidelity and to a more significant presence in the Church and in society.  Another significant achievement concerning formation has been to have reached an agreement, at least in theory, on some basic principles to be kept in mind in permanent formation as well as in initial formation.  I want to speak about these, because in spite of the agreement reached concerning them, nevertheless, they have not always found the opportune or convenient mediations to put them into practice.

1.1.   Formation has to be integral. Above all, it is necessary to remember, in order to draw the opportune consequences, that formation has to be integral, that is, it has to take into account  the persons as a whole, in all their totality so that they may develop, in a harmonious way, their physical, psychic, moral and intellectual talents and all their human, spiritual and charismatic dimensions[4] .

One of the errors of the formative method in the past was that of forming the persons fragmentally.  In many cases there was too much insistence on one dimension forgetting others which were also fundamental, or the development of some talents was fostered leaving aside others equally important.  It has not been infrequent that the major concern was to identify the persons with the things that they had to do according to the Charisma – teaching, health, preaching, missions – and thus formation was only or in great part, given in this direction.

As a consequence, there has been only a partial and not an integral development of the person.  Very frequently the persons have not readapted their humanity, crossed by the breath of the Spirit of God, and finally did not develop the mystical dimension of their life.

If we do not want to form “fragmented personalities”, we have to give impulse and favour integral formation of the persons in such a way that, at all moments, the persons present themselves “totally, whole”, always on the way in the following of Jesus, identifying themselves, not so much by what they do, but above all by what they are.

1.2   Formation has to be personalized.  It is equally necessary to remember that formation has to be personalized.  Each one of us is unrepeatable,  “unique”.  And, each one of us responds to the call of the Lord according to his/her unique and original situation. This implies that formation has to be “appropriate” to the process of each one,  it must adapt itself to the real rhythm of growth of each person, so that the values which formation intends to transmit to consecrated life may be personally assimilated by each one.     

In this context I think it is convenient to reaffirm the need for personal accompaniment which, starting at the concrete reality of each person being formed, will stimulate each one of them to attain the goal of every consecrated life: “conformity to the Lord Jesus in his total self-giving”[5].  This accompaniment will make it possible to verify the state of the values, how much they have been interiorized, and this implies that the values be chosen freely, be authentically esteemed and that a harmonious behaviour corresponds  to them.

If in the past, because of the homogeneity of those called, perhaps it was sufficient to give attention to the formation of the group, but today, given the unique character of each one – because of difference of age and individual experiences, or because of the diverse degree of human and Christian culture which they bring with them – without neglecting the group, much importance has to be allotted to each person, in order to find the just equilibrium  between the formation of the group and that of each person, between respect for the times foreseen for each phase of formation and its adaptation to the rhythm of each one”[6]. 

1.3. Formation has to be experiential. Since the following of Jesus is a life and not simply an ideology, formation to consecrated life has to be experiential, that is, it must favor the concrete experience of the life-style and of the values proper to the Charism.

We must also point out that in the past formation sinned in being too theoretical, tin considering, above all, the assimilation of the contents, in being too magisterial.  Formation today, without forgetting the contents, has to look, above all, to the assimilation of the values proper to the Charism, to the “progressive assimilation of the sentiments of Christ towards the Father”[7]. In order to respond to this exigency, formation has to touch the four vital centers of the person: the intelligence with its contents; the heart, in so far as it is the see of sentiments; the hands, that is, has to be practical; the feet, that is, it has to help us to walk through life.

But here, it is also necessary to distinguish between experience and experiments.  In order that a formative activity is an experience and is not reduced to a mere experiment it has to be well prepared, well accompanied and periodically evaluated.

1.4.    Formation has to be permanent,  even more, formation because of its own nature is permanent. Consecrated persons are not called nor consecrated once and for all.  The fulfillment of that to which we have been called will be attained only, by grace, after death.  In this way, nobody can truly say that he/she has conformed completely with Christ, the last objective of formation, this means that formation is a task of all our life  and that, therefore, it is a process  which “never ends”[8].  “The consecrated person can never claim to have completely brought to life the ‘new creature’ who in every circumstance of life reflects the very mind of Christ...,  none are exempt from the obligation to grow humanly and as Religious”[9].  To limit formation to a determinate “season” of life would be to renounce to the possibility of growing in conformity to Christ and to the adherence to the Charism and to the mission  of one’s own Institute. The words of Saint Bernard can also be applied here: “not to advance is equal to going backward”.  Life either progresses towards maturity or undertakes the way back towards self destruction.  Thus, we always have to be ready “to begin anew”[10].

But there is something more, permanent formation, considered as a process of continuous conversion of heart,  is an “intrinsic exigency of religious consecration”[11], an exigency of creative fidelity to our vocation and mission and is the humus of initial formation.

All this implies that initial formation should be closely  connected with permanent formation, “thereby, creating a readiness on everyone’s part to let themselves be formed every day of their  lives”[12], and that in each Entity there should be a Project of permanent formation which considers each vital cycle, in such a way, that creative fidelity is strengthened and each person finds “a diverse task to carry out, a specific way of being, of serving and of loving”[13].

1.5. Formation has to be progressive and gradual.   According to the law of progression, formation is carried out thanks to a slow evolutional process, and thus it needs a “broad space of time”[14] to assimilate the values and for the transformation of the sentiments and of the behavior.  That  formation is a gradual process is, therefore, an exigency, as we have already mentioned when speaking abut personalization, to be adapted to the degree of evolution of the persons and to their capacity in assimilating the values.

Even when we always take into account the whole of the contents which have to be transmitted and the values which are to be “interiorized”, in each one of the stages, some of them have to be stressed, considering them more appropriate for that particular phase and as a basis for the others.  This will avoid that the growth of the person may suffer interruptions, regressions or contradictions and will assure the unity in the formative journey.  On the other hand, the evolutional process implies that each formative stage should be considered as a continuation of the previous one and as preparation for the next one.

1.6.  Formation has to be accompanied.  Since in the formative process it is a question, in last instance, to transmit a “form of life” according to the Charism of one’s own Institute, more than to transmit a doctrine, formation needs more witnesses than teachers or masters, transmitters who will authenticate the word by their life.    

Since God the Father, through the Spirit infuses into the heart of those who are called the sentiments of the Son, the Formator par excellence, nevertheless, he uses human mediations, “placing at the side of those whom he calls some more mature brothers and sisters”.  They have the responsibility to show the beauty of the following of Jesus, to accompany those who are called on the way of the Lord and to nourish their lives with solid doctrine and with the life of prayer, in such a way that throughout their life, consecrated persons can live fully the surrender of their love and enthusiasm for Christ[15].

This accompaniment, which is particularly necessary and effective during initial formation, is also necessary to attain the “true growth in Christ”[16]  for the rest of our lives, particularly during “the first years of full insertion in apostolic activity”[17].

All this is a reason which makes it urgent to form “accompaniers”, Formators, men and women, who join to an adequate human formation a profound experience of God and a clear experience of the paths that lead to God “in order to be capable to accompany others on this journey”[18]. In this formation we put many things at stake.  Many times the crisis of formation are due to the lack and to the crisis of Formators.  Thus, it is necessary to “dedicate (to permanent and initial formation), qualified personnel and their adequate preparation must be a priority commitment. We must be very generous in dedicating our time and best energies to formation”.  Without this “all formative and apostolic plans remain theory and useless desires”[19].

2.   The great challenges launched by the International Congress on Consecrated Life to Formation for this life

From what was said in the Congress I think that the principal challenges presented to Formation could be synthesized in three: to form the person to live the passion for Christ, to form the person to love life and to form the person to set free the passion for humanity.

1.   To Form the person to live the passion for Christ

The first Icon used in the Congress was the Icon of the Samaritan woman (cf. Jn 4, 5-42).  This Icon places us before a reality which “pursues” every man: the thirst for plenitude.  Like the Samaritan woman, we too want to quench our thirst definitively so as not to have to go back to the well to draw out some water.  That thirst for plenitude for the believer and more for a consecrated person, can only be quenched in the Lord. “You made us for yourself, Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you”, will be the confession of the “seeker of wells” and of the believing Agustin.

The post-modern culture, certainly, does not help us so to  quench our thirst, which torments us, in the “source of water welling up to eternal life” (Jn 4, 13).  Far from directing us to the “spring of living waters” it constantly stimulates us to go and “draw water” from “cracked water tanks which do not hold the water” (Jr 2, 13).  The neo-liberal ideology, sustained by the culture of the media (mediatic), propagates values which separate us from this spring, and the religiosity and spirituality, typical of post-modernity, the maximum expression of which is the so called New Age, pushes, particularly, the youngest, to go from the “hard” of  faith to the “soft”  of a syncretism and religious subjectivism which, far from leading to a personal encounter with the God revealed in Jesus, leads to an esoteric mysticism, to the sacred holism and to the profound ecologism, without excluding, before or after, the death itself of God[20].

Before this impact, we consecrated persons continue to affirm that “consecrated life will only succeed to be born from the ashes of the post-modern fire if it recovers the foundation experience of God”[21]; we continue to confess that the “Person of Jesus, Christ, is the center of our life”[22]; we continue to affirm that the “depth and totality of this passion for Christ  will become, almost  spontaneously, to be total and unconditional participation in  the passion for humanity[23]; and we continue to affirm with Vatican Council II that “the fundamental norm of the religious life  is a following of Christ as proposed by the Gospel” and that therefore, that norm “is to be regarded by all communities as their supreme law”[24].  All this means that consecrated life, theologically speaking, has its foundation in Christ, to such a point that consecrated persons try to make contemporary in today’s world, the way of living of Jesus and the options which characterized him: “Thanks to the Spirit who was granted to us, those of us who belong to consecrated life,  try to be the Memory of the life style and of the  gift of self of  Jesus of Nazareth”[25]

Starting from this fact, more or less assumed by all, it is understood that the foundation of formation cannot be any other but the personal encounter with Christ and that formation itself should be considered as a progressive “conforming with the Lord Jesus and with his total surrender”, having as the last objective “the progressive assimilation of the sentiments of Christ towards the Father..., in such a way that every attitude and every type of behaviour manifest the total and joyful belonging to God”[26].  In other words, formation to consecrated life, which begins with the call from the Lord and the decision of each one to follow the footsteps of Jesus Christ, as his disciple under the action of the Holy Spirit, and which ends with the visit of “corporal sister death”, will not attain its last objectives, if formation does not lead consecrated persons to make the foundation experience of God in their lives, so that then we can be witnesses of the transcendence within history.

As Diana Papa and Bruno Secondin affirmed during the Congress  “humanity needs to encounter men and women who move with passion in the mystical dimension of life, who know how to listen to the voice of silence, who are in contact with the flowing of the existence common to all, and that its word may be resonance of their life in God.  The world needs to see living persons, who assume in their daily life the sentiments of Jesus Christ  (Phil 2, 5)…”[27]

Because of this it is urgent that all of us who have been called to maintain alive the voice of God in a world which had always difficulty to listen to him, but at present perhaps, even more, that we place Jesus in the center of our options, of our life.  Immersion in Christ is indispensable for the one who truly wants to be the “sentinel of the morning” (Is 21, 11-12) in this dawn of the Third Millennium. Personally, I am fully convinced that the qualitative structure of consecrated life depends of the pre-eminence of the Other  in our lives; and that this pre-eminence presupposes, among other things, a profound life of prayer.  If we want to overcome what the Congress called “the phase of anemia of great ideals and evangelical projects”, through which it is passing, especially, in the Northern hemisphere[28] ; if we want to overcome the temptation of  “a reform of updating of little significance” and “Weak Refoundation”; if we want to put an end to the fragility of the message which consecrated life is communicating today; if we want, finally, to give alternative responses in the Church and in the world in which we have to live[29], it is essential to attain what the Congress called a “significant spiritual concentration”.

All this requires that from the first stages of formation we propose ourselves and propose to our young “a counter-cultural project founded in a profound and solid experience of God and in a radical following of Christ”[30].  It also demands that beginning with initial formation, men and women of prayer be prepared, for whom prayer constitutes a need for their whole life; men and women whose stages of life be accompanied by an intense life of prayer[31], certain that it is from there, from a personal, intimate and profound encounter with Christ in prayer, from where will be born the proposal or project of a life all informed by the person of Christ, of a life polarized by him, learning to cultivate the same sentiments of Christ (Phil 2, 5)”[32].  Only like that will we be able to develop a therapeutic function for humanity, which is thirsty for God.

How do we prepare ourselves and how do we prepare our younger brothers for this complex, delicate and fascinating  task?  What demands does this imply?

Formation for this encounter with Christ entails:

To form ourselves and to form others in the experience of faith. This implies, in the first place, to assume faith as the root, heart and foundation of consecrated life and of its mission, conscious that faith alone can render more stable the ultimate foundation of the life project of the consecrated person.  It also presupposes, to educate ourselves and to educate in faith, which is not only a simple rational knowledge, a simple theological reflection, a simple repetition of formulae or a simple ideological system or a blind willful adherence, but rather a personal encounter with Jesus Christ, a gradual discovery and existential acceptance of the reality of God and of man in the light of Jesus Christ. Finally, it presupposes, to form ourselves and to form others to assume that faith is a journey which never ends, a never completed experience, a search for God, many times very difficult and hard, an openness to obedience to the breath of the Spirit, an experience always in need of being renewed and which impels us always to begin anew, as Saint Francis of Assisi would say. 

To form ourselves and to form others  in interiority in the face of the super valuing of appearances. In the past we have witnessed a displacement from  being to having.  Today, we see, without the capacity to react, a displacement from being and having towards pretending.  Ours is the society of marketing.  Appearances direct the life of persons[33].  We are in a society of the image and of appearance, of exteriority. What great care we take of the wrapping! The culture of the image and of appearance strengthens the phenomenon of the supremacy of the immediate. There is no time to deepen in things, there is no place for the great values. At first sight, what appears as good is good.  In this context we must say that for a personal encounter with Jesus, fostered in prayer, the practice of faith, of hope and charity, it is necessary to have an encounter with one’s own interiority which leads us beyond appearances, to the depth of life and which avoids a strong crisis of truth.

To perceive the personal moments of solitude and of  contemplation as a requirement for the encounter with one’s own interiority, as a gift and an exigency also to grow in the experience of the living encounter with the Lord, and in order to be able to read one’s own life with the eyes of faith. In this sense I do not doubt to affirm the great importance that silence and solitude have for the encounter with oneself and with the Lord,  on condition that they are not reduced to isolation or that they are the manifestation of the incapacity to communicate, but rather that the person withdraws or retires in order to be sent.

To deepen in one’s own vocation and mission through  familiarity with Sacred Scripture, in such a way that consecrated persons can found their personal and fraternal journey – personal and communitarian discernment – on the Word of God.   For this, it is necessary to liberate the Word of God from a very academic and  hardly sapiential interpretation, too moralistic and very little existential.  In this sense it is urgent to have an adequate biblical formation and a frequent communitarian practice of  Prayerful Reading  on the Word  (I avoid using the expression Lectio divina so as not to think that this is only proper to monastic tradition).  The Bible should be the companion on the  journey  of every consecrated person.  On the other hand, the Prayerful Reading of the Word evangelizes us and will help us to take back the Gospel as the first norm and rule of life[34].

To experience the sacramental life – particularly the Sacrament of reconciliation and the Eucharist – as intense moments of encounter with the Lord, with ourselves and with others[35].

2. To Form the person to set free the passion for humanity

The second Icon used in the Congress, that of the Good Samaritan (cf. Lk 10, 29-37), impels us to the encounter with the other, no matter how different he may be.  From the encounter with the Other we go to the other.  And this is because since the “Word became flesh” (Jn 1, 14), the Other and the other are inseparable, as inseparable are the Crucified and those crucified.  In this way the Icon of the Good Samaritan is presented to us as a complement of the Icon of the Samaritan woman and in turn leads us to affirm that the passion for Christ is not possible without the passion for humanity.

At present in our days, we witness the constant multiplication of persons who are beaten and naked, left “half dead” on the border of civilization, marginalized and many times manipulated, thanks, among other causes, to the neo-liberal ideology and consequent depersonalizing globalization.  They are children of God whose dignity is stepped on, who are waiting for intensely human presences, who make them feel the love of God, a real love and not simply a virtual one[36].

In a crucified society,  such as ours, we also, like the Good Samaritan, are called to get close to the one who is “half dead” on the edge of the road, to make our neighbor the one who is far from our interests, from our likes, from our life.  Like the Good Samaritan, we are called to postpone our personal projects and to interrupt our journey to feel touched, affected by the situation of the “other” and responsible for him.  It is well to recall here what the Working Document of the Congress said: “The Consecrated life that wants to have the guarantee of fecundity must be read in the key of service, company and solidarity with the persons who are suffering or are in a situation of misery; it must find the ways to ... take care of wounded faces without forgetting to struggle against violent and unjust systems”[37]

Here, we see clearly, what J.B. Libanio pointed out in his conference to the Congress: the profound paschal dialectics that truly, we can only find life and ourselves, when we lose it, giving ourselves to the “other”, taking care of the other[38], going from the concern for oneself  to the gift of oneself.  And, precisely, here is the difficulty.  Post-modernity does not help us to enter into this logic.  The present day culture, in fact, places the “I” in the center!  This is nourished by pleasure, by the subjectivist and emotional experience, joining the “thirst for love with the loving disorder”[39], to the point of seeking in the other one’s own fulfillment  and not the personal fulfillment by means of the other.  We are living in a “crucified” society  and in a culture that fears diversity.  Before the “other”, the “different”, we easily feel insecure. From here comes the tendency to want to unite ourselves to those who think like we do and live like we do; the tendency to form “ghettos”.

Before this tendency it is necessary to form ourselves and to form others to “free” our passion for others, so frequently passionate for the “I”.  This formation, among other things demands:

To form ourselves and to form others for dialogue,  not as an sporadic or irregular act or like a strategy, but like a permanent way of thinking and acting, which, besides an adequate preparation in permanent and initial formation, in study and research,[40] it implies:

To clarify one’s own identity.  There can be no authentic dialogue without knowing where we start, without each one knowing who they are and in the presence of  whom they are, without being faithful to their own identity.  This fidelity to one’s own identity, far from being lived in a fundamentalist attitude, an attitude which results from fear to think  and from the illusion of a faith without doubts, has to be lived in a permanent attitude of listening and of respect, of cordiality and of sincerity[41].  These attitudes alone will lead us to grow in dialogue constituted by listening and by proclamation.  One cannot construct one’s own identity by closing up in oneself, but rather in starting from the other, from the diverse, from alterity.  Formation in dialogue should be a chapter of integral development, which is the objective of formation in accompanying the person towards the discovery, the re-appropriation and the growth in identity.

To educate to face conflicts  and for the critical confrontation with diverse positions beginning by the passion for man and his ineludible dignity.  As we well know, conflict is not bad in itself. It all depends how we manage it. I think it is very important to educate others and to educate ourselves adequately to face conflicts.

To form ourselves and form others in a culture of acceptance and of hospitality,  which has its roots in the understanding of the other as something ineludible.

Post-modern culture, dominated by the neo-liberal ideology and sustained by the  culture of mass media (mediatic) favors the creation of narcissist identities, centered on the fostering of one self, of appearances... In this context it is urgent to form ourselves and form others in a culture of acceptance and of hospitality.  According to me, for this, it is necessary to overcome the formative models based on the concept of individual perfection and of  the sacred objectivity, in favor of the models founded on concepts of encounter and of dialogue”[42].

Once this principle is assumed from initial formation, impulse must be given and lead the persons to get out of  their social surroundings, to leave aside the securities of their own cultural tradition, to be able to find, with faith and in faith, the different one from self, and, at the same time, to show how justly, in that abandonment of self, on this continuous journey of kénosis  towards the “foreigner”, the person is fulfilled and fulfills his vocation.

It is urgent to form ourselves and to form others  to find words capable of creating communion with persons who are different.  It is indispensable to form ourselves and to form others in respect for those who are “different”,  in the capacity to listen and to take into account the points of view of those who are different. It is a priority to form ourselves and to form others to “embrace”, and not only to “bear or put up”, with ethnic, cultural and theological differences, also in our fraternities[43].

In the time of the “virtual relationship”, it is fundamental to form others and to form ourselves to live in a relationship which is at the same time, profound, free and liberating.  It is only in this type of relationship that one can be able to listen to the other in his “alterity”, without falling into the temptation of reducing him to our own schema, up to the point, even of eliminating him.  It is then a question of a journey of growth in freedom, understood as control on one self and which leads to the donation of self.

2. To form ourselves and to form others in an incarnated and practical spirituality[44].   The post modern culture favors the loss of the social dimension.  In this context I see that it is necessary to form others and to form ourselves in a spirituality rooted in life, with all its density of injustice and conflict, of hope and project.  This implies:

To develop a contemplative attitude capable of listening to God in concrete life,  an contemplative attitude capable of discovering God in the world and particularly in the poor. It is necessary to be very attentive so as not to fall nor allow others to fall in an intimist, timid or fleeing, quietist and interiorist  spirituality. It is necessary to join firmly spirituality and vital and historical practice, not to empty spirituality in its action, but rather to make it a path and a germ of transformation of reality, first of our own reality and then of the reality of others.

To have concrete experiences of life close to the poorest and with the smallest, in a condition of minors - well programmed, adequately accompanied and periodically evaluated -  which will lead to finding the path of the poor and to assume a personal and communitarian style of solidarity with them.  In this sense, among the criteria of vocational discernment, should be inserted the sense of justice, of peace and respect for creation[45].  Consecrated life, and therefore, formation to that life,  are authentic when they are lived, not as a flight from the world  and from history, but as leaven and impulse within that history.  Formation must make consecrated persons of today and of tomorrow, capable to look at history with an open mind and heart, ready to propose to our contemporaries paths of hope.  From that point of view we want to form ourselves and form others so as to be able to establish profound, intimate and significant relationships in this society of the “broken ethos”.  Humanity, particularly, the crucified humanity, needs men and women who move with passion along life, who are in contact with the flow of the common existence of all and that their word may be a resonance of their life in God.  The world needs men and women permeated by the sentiments of Christ (cf. Phil  2, 5), who will be witnesses through justice, peace, pardon mercy, tenderness, solidarity, meekness and love (cf. VC  27).

To become familiar with the diverse faces of the Crucified.  For this it is necessary to go  from a “bourgeois” formation to an “inculturated” formation; to go from a “permissive” formation, where what is important is that the person being formed may feel well, at ease, to an “exigent” formation in which the following of Jesus Christ is presented  in its evangelical radicalness, exactly the contrary to what the “pedagogy of consolation” does[46].  It is necessary to overcome, through an experiential formation, the so called “white schism”, with which a language is created in contradiction with what one really feels and, many times, lives.  This implies a step forward: 

To form ourselves and to form others so as to pitch our tent with the have-nots, the defeated, the excluded, allowing ourselves to be seduced by the forgotten cloisters, the inhuman cloisters where the beauty and the dignity of persons are constantly  blemished or stained.  In this way our option for the poor will go beyond the proclamation, beyond words and will lead us to be poor as they are, to exercise a prophetic defence of human rights and be active agents of peace and justice[47].

3.   To Form the person to love life

The passion for God and the passion for humanity leads us to a different vision on ourselves which has nothing to do with the anthropological “vision” which was inculcated in an already obsolete formation, at least in the documents; neither with the “vision” which is presented to us today from the post-modern culture.  

In fact, during a long time, both in permanent and initial formation, a certain spiritualism was stressed, and this led to neglect the integral development of the person and even to consider the body as the “place” of sin, forgetting that we have been created in the image and likeness of God (cf. Gn 1, 31), and to enjoy life as an evil, forgetting that we have been created to be happy.

On the other hand the post-modern culture propagates the values of health, the worship to beauty and of the body, the decisive character of appearances.  We form part, whether we want it or not, of the kingdom of the physical and of marketing.  Everything, thanks, at least in part, to the mass media (mediatic).

Keeping in mind the context of yesterday and that of today, it is urgent to form ourselves and to form others in:

A positive vision of the body,  giving it the depth of “sacrament” which, according to biblical revelation, it has, in so far as it is in the  “image” and “likeness” of the Creator without making an idol of it.  Starting from the Mystery of the Incarnation in which the Son of God took a body like ours, we consecrated persons want to form ourselves and form others to make visible the beauty of the master piece of God, assuming our own corporeity  as ”temple of God” (cf. I Cor 3, 16).  It is only by integrating the biological, psychic, social and existential levels and working tirelessly for interior unification that we will be able to make visible the beauty of God’s master piece.  And, only in this way, will we be able to show “the beauty of the following of Christ and the value of the Charism in which it becomes concrete”[48].

Affective freedom, “thanks to which the consecrated person loves his vocation and loves according to his vocation”[49].  At this present moment when consecrated life is a “counter-cultural” project, it is important to form ourselves and to form others to “accept consecration as a true, beautiful and good reality, which communicates truth, beauty and goodness to one’s own existence”[50]  In order to attain such a beautiful, as well as difficult goal, it is necessary to have a specific formation of affectivity which, is far from a narcissist-adolescent attitude, rigorist or laxist, which will lead us and lead our candidates to feel the call to consecrated life as a valid and beautiful reason to live. 

Some pedagogical notes

Reading here and there in the different conferences of the Congress we can find some important pedagogical notes.

2.1. To work beginning with what is lacking.  The Samaritan woman as well as the Good Samaritan are sinners, but in them, availability to do good is not lacking.  Concretely, if we look at the Icon of the Samaritan woman we see that she passes from a defensive and hostile attitude toward Jesus to an attitude of enthusiastic collaboration with Jesus, to the point of becoming his “disciple” and “apostle” of the “Jew” Jesus before her people.  In her there has been a true paschal process.  There is a movement in a way of thinking and judging to another one, from some structures and convictions to others.  In the case of the Samaritan woman the true “paschal process” takes place and what seemed to be definite results in being provisional[51].

All this can be attained thanks to Jesus, as an expert formator, works with the lacks or shortcomings of this woman from Samaria, who having nothing, does not have what could be expected so that a Jew could enter into a profound dialogue with her.  In fact: she is a woman, with all that this implies in the culture of that time; she does not belong to the chosen people; she has no husband... But none of these lacks is going to be an obstacle for the encounter of Jesus with her.  Jesus accepts her as she is, in her “poor” reality.

The majority of the subjects of formation today are “Samaritans”.  This is the case of our young, the many or the few who come, they do not generally come from protected places, but from “profane places” and from the “inclemency” of time. Many of them have had many “husbands” and the one they now have is not “their husband”.  Their religious experience, and not only that, frequently there is much to be desired.  What is more frequent is that in the formative work it is necessary to begin at zero or almost there.  But also in permanent formation, many times, not to say always, the subjects in formation, we have to work from our lacks, from our “not having”, from our “not being able”.  “Our own poverty acknowledged and placed in relationship with Jesus, is not an obstacle to receive the gift of living water, but the best occasion to accept it and to allow it to well up to Eternal Life”[52].  In every formative process it is important, not to say fundamental, to recognize the thirst in those who call for the first time to our religious house and in those of us who have been living there for some time.  Neither one nor the other, are we exempt of the precariousness and vulnerability.  To acknowledge this is the first step so that the Other can lead us to know the gift of God  and to quench our thirst definitively.

2.2.   Looking for wells and roads together.  When one has the experience of one’s own precariousness, of one’s  weak reality, always fragile and never finished, of one’s “half death”, like in the case of the Good Samaritan, and at the same time, has the experience of having been “taken care of” by the great Good Samaritan who is Jesus and that he is being cured, one will not doubt in feeling that he has been caught up by the “wounded” one, whether he is a brother in initial formation or a brother in permanent formation, and in feeling co-responsible for his life.

In every process of formation, whether initial or permanent, it is fundamental to change our attitude of perpetual “donors” so as to feel travelers with those who travel, seekers with those who seek.  In this context it is important to note, as Dolores Aleixandre  did during the Congress, how Jesus presents himself in a situation of abandonment and vulnerability[53].  And since we are all vulnerable, it is necessary to convince ourselves  of the importance of accompanying and supporting the faith of one another, learning to read life together and to make it possible for each one to share the water of his experience”[54]: on this journey there are no teachers, we are all disciples and we are all on the way.

And it is in this way that Jesus overcame barriers which “separated” him from the Samaritan woman: the fact of being a woman, of belonging to a heterodox people and the many prejudices of ethnic type which existed on the part of some towards others; in this same way, it is up to the formator/ accompanier, both in initial and in permanent formation, to take the first step towards the  one being formed/accompanied and accept him in his situation of lacks.  The acceptance of one’s own reality and of the reality of the other is the first and fundamental attitude to be adopted by the one called to be a formator/accompanier.

For this reason among the characteristics which should distinguish a formator/accompanier is that of dedicating a long time and having much patience with the person before him, just as God has with all of us “half dead Samaritans”.  To be conformed with Christ implies a process of a hard conversion, a very slow process. In this, as in many other things, haste usually is very harmful.     

2.3.    A provocative/interpretative pedagogy.   Jesus, as a very ski