Program of Priestly Formation 6th edition

SEMINARY FORMATION: THOSE WHO ACCOMPANY SEMINARIANS | 49

will involve challenge and encouragement, correction and accountability, as the formator listens to the deeper motives behind the actions of the seminarian and helps him to integrate the various aspects of his life. It will require cultivating in the seminarian attitudes that promote living a life of virtue. It requires truly knowing the seminarian and his particular growth needs. To this end, “it is important that every seminarian be aware of his own life history, and be ready to share it with his formators. This would include especially his experience of childhood and adolescence, the influ ence that his family and his relatives have exercised upon him, his ability to establish mature and well balanced interpersonal relationships, or his lack thereof, and his ability to handle positively moments of solitude.” 154 Such accompaniment must bring together all the aspects of the human person, allowing him to surrender his whole life to Christ in obedience and interior freedom. “In fact it is only in the crucified and risen Christ that this path of integration finds meaning and completion; all things are united in him (see Eph 1:10).” 155 The key element in this formative accompaniment is mutual trust. It is essential that “the seminarian should know himself and let himself be known.” 156 This openness is required for real formation to happen. If a man hides his struggles in formation, growth cannot happen. The seminary community should seek to create the conditions that foster this peaceful climate of trust and mutual confidence through relationships marked by “fraternity, empathy, understanding, the ability to listen and to share, and especially a coherent witness of life.” 157 This climate of mutual confidence will be helped by the formators accompanying the seminar ians outside of formal meetings in meals, recreation, and other potentially formative experiences. These times can provide excellent opportunities to know the seminarians and provide the formation that comes from witness of life and ordinary encounters. When the seminarian experiences that the priest formators live true fatherhood seeking his good, and that the life of the seminary is marked by a spirit of true fraternity, this trust will not be difficult to establish. 158 101.

154 Ratio Fundamentalis , no. 94. 155 Ratio Fundamentalis , no. 29. 156 Ratio Fundamentalis , no. 45. 157 Ratio Fundamentalis , no. 47. 158 See Ratio Fundamentalis , no. 52.