Greetings to you, candidates in formation and the elders who accompany them. In many ways, our formation programme and you, our candidates, deserve to be praised. But, as one does not need to correct what works well, the letters I send you usually treat of some points of concern. This one will be true to type.
There is something strange in the New Testament. If you compare the confession of faith of Saint Peter and the words uttered by evil spirits when Jesus casts them out, you will see that they are very close to each other. Saint Peter says to Jesus: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Mt 6: 16). The evil spirits use the same expression: “Son of God” (Mt 8: 29). How is it that a friend of Jesus and his enemies end up saying the same thing about him? Is there no difference between the two? I believe there is. The relationship is different. With the evil spirits, one finds knowledge, cold rational knowledge, outside of the context of a loving relationship. On the other side, with Saint Peter, there is imperfect knowledge (he will end up denying Jesus) but it is accompanied by friendship. When Jesus asks him, “Do you love me?” He answers rather sheepishly: “You know that very well!” There are different types of knowledge, one involving reason, the intellect only and the other involving the whole person, body, heart and soul.
Here are a couple of examples of those different ways of knowing. Let us imagine a young doctor from the Western world who wants to serve in a tropical country. Obviously, he needs to learn tropical medicine. He will study the whole cycle of the malaria parasites, all the symptoms of the sickness, its dangers and all the medicines used to cure it. Once he has learnt everything there is to know about malaria, he knows. Then one day, he goes to a malaria infected region and, one evening, starts shivering, has nausea, feels pain in the joints, has to go to bed with 40° of fever. Now, he knows what malaria means. It is clear, there is a huge difference between reading about malaria in books and being sick in bed... Priests, without realising it, often do not know what they are talking about when speaking of a father’s love. It is one thing to imagine such love, another to hold one’s own baby in one’s arms. A friend of mine once told me he “understood” God a bit more after he had had children. Intellectual knowledge and knowledge gained through experience are very different.
The Apostles knew Jesus; they had met the person, followed him, shared meals, lived with him. He touched their hearts: “to whom shall we go, you have the words of eternal life!” (Jn 6: 68). They knew him. He was a friend, a master, their Rabbi, their teacher ... Some questioning took place while they were together but deeper reflexion happened after the resurrection. Who was this Jesus they lived with? They came up with answers: “He is the Lord; he is the Messiah, the Son of God”. For centuries, theologians have reflected and proposed answers that became more and more precise. Jesus is the second person of the Holy Trinity, one person, two natures. The first knowledge of Jesus was not intellectual; it was knowledge by experience, by encounter, by living with him and sharing his life. Intellectual knowledge developed afterwards.
Stage reports are a good tool to know what is important to our candidates, what they have in their heart. In those reports, one can hear echoes of joy, fulfilment and happiness but also of hurts, pain and even, at times, of some traumatic experience. It is one favoured place where they can express themselves. When the heart of a stagiaire is full of love for Jesus, if he has met him in his brothers and sisters, in prayer, in the sacraments, one can usually see this clearly in the odd 20 pages of the stage report. In some cases though, one can see very little of that, to the point that the names of Jesus or Christ never appear in the entire report.
One wonders: what knowledge of Jesus does he have? If he had a real knowledge of the heart, a real friendship with Jesus, it should show. It is difficult to believe he can write 20 pages about prayer (relationship with Jesus), about the evangelical counsels (ways of imitating Jesus), about his experience of preaching (the Good News of Jesus), about the meaning he gives to his Missionary vocation (sent as Jesus), of the meaning he gives to his vocation (as a disciple of Jesus) without ever speaking of Jesus or mentioning his name. Nevertheless, it has happened and more than once. The report of the Parish and of the Provincial might be very positive: “our stagiaire was full of enthusiasm, dedicated to pastoral work, was active, enjoyed catechetics and teaching in schools.” But what did he teach? What type of knowledge did/does he have? If his heart was full of Jesus, how comes it does not show in his report?
How do we form our candidates to spiritual life?
In our formation programme, the spiritual aspect is the most difficult to convey to our candidates. There is plenty of interest for intellectual formation. Find a good course, good lecturers, and give people time to study and, after a few years, the trick is done. But how do we form our candidates to spiritual life? Often the fire is lit already and its warmth can be felt. But there is no way formators can light that fire in the heart of a person who is not interested. We cannot force a candidate to enter into a loving relationship with the person of Jesus and to keep on developing that relationship over the years. All the more so that most of our candidates believe they know Jesus... and they do to a certain extent!
They have intellectual knowledge, learned through catechism and through books. Why should they invest time and energy in something they already know? They do not realize they might know with the wrong type of knowledge. It does not occur to them that they might not know all that they think they know. This aspect of our formation programme is the most difficult because it depends almost entirely on the candidate himself.
Our Society can give our candidates all the necessary elements to build a solid spiritual life and put them in the right environment so that the fire might be lit. It cannot light it for them. The moulding of your heart through sustained, regular time spent with Jesus, the lifelong pondering on the texts of the Gospels in order to be identified with Jesus, the fidelity to the consciousness exam which should slowly enable you to discover your defects and open your heart to Jesus, the seriousness given to Spiritual Direction, accepting to lay bare the depths of your soul to a companion... all that, and the other tools of spiritual deepening (like lectio, devotions...) belong to you.
Dear Candidates, we cannot live in your place. Each one has to live his own life. We cannot pray in your place... each one has to develop his own spirituality, enter into the friendship Jesus proposes.
It is difficult to ascertain how well we are succeeding in this aspect of our formation. I made a survey of the remarks made to a group of stagiaires by the General Council. Question marks were raised about the prayer life of half of them. Several of them never mentioned the name of Jesus in their entire report. Their sharing on the Evangelical counsels (ways of imitating Jesus) was deemed from poor to very poor for three quarters of them. These numbers are not very encouraging.
Our Pope Francis says: “Formation [of future priests] is a work of art, not a police action. We must form their hearts. Otherwise, we are creating little monsters...” and also “...their time studying must be used to mould their hearts as well as their minds...” If people have intellectual knowledge of Jesus but do not have a heart full of love for him, what is the difference between them and the evil spirits in the Gospel?
It is vital you dig sound foundations in view of the commitment you want to take. If you have not sufficiently developed this crucial aspect of your vocation during your formative years, you are building on sand and the house built on sand will collapse and fall to the ground (Lk 7: 26). Experience has shown that this is a frightening but real possibility. Christ is faithful and will give us the strength we need but he will not do for us what is our own responsibility. So, dear brothers, build on rock!
Jean-Michel Laurent
Secretary for Initial Formation