FAITH DEEPENING AND INTERNALIZATION OF CORE CHRISTIAN VALUES: A WAY FORWARD IN OUR WITNESSING AS PRIESTS AND RELIGIOUS IN FORMATION

Abstract

No one encounters the Lord Jesus Christ and remains the same. Today more than any other time, there is the need for formators to live up to the life and Christian values they desire to inculcate in the formandi. With the growing problems facing the priesthood and religious life and with the need to have young men and women of faith and character whoidentify gracefully with the life of Christ as priests and religious, this paper investigates the persuasive power of witness by those called to form men and women of our time in seminaries and houses of formation.
It argues that it is by encounter, experience and the renewal of experience of the risen Lord that the formator can deepen faith, live, witness, then “create†or inspire in the formandi a yearning for the same Lord especially, through fidelity to the living spirituality and charism of the founder of one’s proper institute. In other words, It is upon this experience of Christ that faith is anchored and deepened, and that values or virtues learnt are internalised and lived. This being the case, one is able to provoke in hearts today, the desire for God, to imitate Jesus and by so doing attract others to the Lord, to the Creative Word of God.