Guide to Ongoing Formation for Priests

CHAPTER 2: ONGOING FORMATION | 25

humans are not personally challenged, life becomes tedious and flat. Those who have fallen into a rut know the heavy weight of stagnation. Growth, in short, is the dynamic of any healthy life. This dynamic is as true in the life of priests as it is in the life of all. When we entered the seminary, we did so with the understanding that we needed several years of preparation before we would be ready for the priesthood. We received formation in the human, spiritual, intellectual, and pastoral dimensions. Eventually we came to our ordination, and our lives changed dramatically when we began our ministry. Yet ordination was not the end of our formation, any more than high school or college was. Growth is a mark of a healthy priesthood. Many spiritual writers have commented that the interior life never stands still. It is like walking uphill on a gravel path. Either we move forward or slip backward. The priesthood, too, is a dynamic reality that, like the interior life, cannot simply stand still. We are always either advancing or backsliding. Ongoing forma tion proposes a set of guidelines and resources to help us keep growing. It ensures that changes in our life, which are inevitable, are directed well and contribute to our continued flourishing as men and as priests. Ongoing formation continues the work that began in our seminary years. “This journey,” the Ratio Fundamentalis states, “is the natural continuation of the process of building up priestly identity begun in Seminary and accom plished sacramentally in priestly ordination, in view of a pastoral service that causes it to mature over time.” 45 This Guide , in fact, can be seen as a sequel to the Program of Priestly Formation , which was first published in 1971 and is now in its sixth edition. 46 66. POST-SEMINARY FORMATION 67.

45 Ratio Fundamentalis , no. 81. “It is particularly important to be aware of and to respect the intrinsic link between formation before ordination to the priesthood and formation after ordination. Should there be a break in continuity, or worse a complete difference between these two phases of formation, there would be serious and immediate repercussions on pastoral work and fraternal communion among priests, especially those in different age groups.” PDV, no. 71. 46 “Ongoing formation is not a repetition of the formation acquired in the seminary, simply reviewed or expanded with new and practical suggestions. Ongoing formation involves relatively new content and especially methods; it develops as a harmonious and vital process which—rooted in the formation received in the seminary—calls for adaptations, updating and modifications, but without sharp breaks in continu ity.” PDV, no. 71.