God does not impose salvation: he proposes it as an initiative of love, to which one must reply by free choice… Mary does not raise objections to the future prepared by God… He wishes to deal with persons who are responsible and free’
John Paul II
Every member of the community is responsible for formation, by helping to create a climate of welcome, love and trust. Only when one is ‘at home’ can one open oneself to life and God’s call with a sense of security and trust and then say ‘yes’ at one’s deepest level. As we are such a young community we also partake in external courses when necessary. At the same time we have established a Formation Team with members external to the community itself to assist us in the process of discernment and evaluation during formation.
All formation is essentially self-formation, God being the primary formator. It is the individual person who holds the responsibility for self-formation, for saying ‘yes’ to the call which has been received and for accepting the consequences of this response.
At the heart of our Formation Vision is a Christian understanding of what it means to be human. Central to the Christian message is the mystery of the Incarnation – Jesus became human and shared our human condition in all things but sin. He embraced humanness in all of its varied dimensions, thus proclaiming the human condition as sacred. Throughout the Gospels, he invites us to do the same – to be so at home with our humanness and in our human world, that we recognise these as the primordial places in and through which God enters our lives.
Formation is based on a clear goal, namely holistic integration for the sake of the mission of Christ and hence it covers all the basic elements of the person’s life: physical, spiritual, apostolic, academic, affective and community. Our Formation Vision is grounded in specific foundational principles which are deepened through each phase of formation. The more our spiritual life becomes incarnated and integrated the more we will reach a unity of lifestyle that expresses personally, vocationally and professionally the person I have been called to be from eternity.