IMPORTANCE OF ONGOING FORMATION

Priesthood and religious life need continuous updating, recreating, renewing and reawakening in order to remain current and effective. Ongoing formation in the Church is a continuous process of human, spiritual, intellectual, and pastoral growth for clergy and religious, aiming to deepen their faith, enhance their ministry, and foster a more vibrant and relevant Church. Having a final profession or an ordination does not mean that one is an expert on every subject and that one is the end product of growth.

The ICOF programme aligns with the Church’s understanding of ongoing formation. Ongoing formation, unlike initial formation, is lived with greater autonomy within the ordinary conditions of the experiential life and ministry of an individual. Ongoing formation is sometimes used as a moment to prepare for a life or ministerial transition, and it thus affords appropriate reflection on the life lived at that point while preparing for the future.

Each religious institute is mandated to have a special task of planning and realising a program of ongoing formation suitable for all its members (#66, The Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life in 1990). Pope Benedict XVI stated that ongoing formation is essential because it involves relatively new content and methods which offer adaptations, updating and modifications in one’s life (#2, Motu Proprio Ministrorum Institutio, 2013). Ongoing formation is an indispensable requirement in the life of every priest because it fosters an interior ongoing openness to the will of God and a continuous conversion of heart, according to the design of God (#56, Ratio Fundamentalis Institutionis Sacerdotalis, 2016). The foregoing actually points to the fact that priestly and religious vocation demands dynamic growth and fidelity in the concrete circumstances of existence. Thus, the priests and the religious need a befitting sabbatical or renewal program such as the one available at Inter Congregation Ongoing Formation (ICOF) Centre in Arusha, Tanzania.

Rev. Fr. Don Phiri, SMA