Practicing the rule

The monks of the Order of St.Benedict take only two vows: Stability and Conversion. Stability means that they will be faithful to the Rule of St.Benedict in a particular monastery. Conversion means that they will never stop striving for holiness, learning from their mistakes or growing in wisdom. So Conversion is the best word I know to describe the Betharramite path of ongoing formation.

Article 171. This formation is a lifelong necessity; each one remains the principal agent of it. It fosters progress in the spiritual life, confronts personal and contemporary problems in a constant conversion to the Gospel. It encourages renewal in apostolic activities.

The days are long gone since we thought that formation finished with final vows. The whole of our life story is a tale of formation, of learning from mistakes, of gaining wisdom and knowledge and deepening our love of the charism of St.Michael. The founding fathers of the old England Vice Province that we all remember with so much love … Fr.Jack Waddoups …Fr.Frank Dutton …Fr.Percy Collier.. all considered themselves to be ‘in formation’ until their dying day.For the young religious in the years just after final vows, ongoing formation is an exciting time, with new liturgical skills to pick up, new ministries to master and new challenging mission posts to tackle. I have been in admiration of my younger brothers in both India and Thailand as I see them rise to the challenge and give themselves wholeheartedly to new assignments, often with a new language to learn and a new culture to grasp. The example of young Thais who have gone to serve in India, Vietnam or Europe has been inspiring, as is the example of young Indians who have gone to serve in Vietnam, Israel & Europe. Since India is such a vast country, even the journey to Assam with its many tribes and tongues is like a venture to another country.

The new superiors in each vicariate have responded to their tasks with generosity. This in itself is a kind of formation. Back in the old days when communities were very large, only about 20% of religious ever became Superiors. Today with much smaller communities, about 80% of all religious will at some point serve their community as Superior. To their credit the superiors have tried to prioritise community life in their houses... common prayer... common purse… common mission... and sharing of experiences. At Vicariate level there are regular meetings for prayer and sharing. In Thailand they meet every two months at Chiang Mai. In India they meet nearly every month at Shobhana Shaakha, and in England 5 times a year at Nympsfield. In all vicariates we are appreciated by the different Dioceses for the work we do, often taking missions that Diocesan priests have been reluctant to accept. But we still have work to do in persuading bishops not to fragment our communities. This pressure can come from a Bishop’s decision to divide a successful Betharram mission into separate parishes, or a diocesan policy to pay for only one priest in a community.Our Rule of Life §§171-175 encourages ongoing formation and gives superiors and their councils an overseeing role in making these a reality. In all three vicariates there are national or diocesan programmes for ongoing formation for priests and religious, and our religious in Thailand especially have taken advantage of these. The church in India with its larger numbers has a multiplicity of formation programmes to choose from, and these attract participants from other countries. Every week in The Tablet there are adverts for Religious Renewal programmes in the UK, run by Redemptorists … Jesuits … Claretians and others, and a few members of our England vicariate have taken advantage of these over the years.

But my own experience has been that no one will take to a programme of formation with enthusiasm unless they perceive the need for it. An organised programme no matter how good, will be a waste of time unless the participants feel the need for it. So what makes people feel the need for ongoing formation?

Firstly we will be open to formation if we have a spirituality of strength-through-weakness. We all know the lines of St.Paul ‘When I am weak then I am strong’ (2 Corinthians 12.10) but to live this in practice runs counter to modern culture, which in all our three vicariates stresses independence and self-sufficiency. Happily, even though by culture and temperament we may feel self-sufficient, life experience soon teaches us a different story. We learn early on in our ministry that despite the high marks we obtained in our moral theology courses we do not have all the answers to people’s situations. We learn quickly too, that the routine of prayer and meditation we found so easy to maintain at seminary was harder to maintain in a pastoral setting and that our spiritual condition could easily deteriorate. We learnt after a while the need for deeper study of scripture, for a deeper grasp of the pattern of spiritual growth and for a deeper understanding of humanity. All these needs have been a stimulus for religious attending courses in scripture, spirituality, liturgy and Ignatian Spirituality. I am often lukewarm when religious want to follow courses on Counselling as I feel that the desire to find solutions for others is often a means of escaping from one’s own inner conflicts. But even this can be turned to good, if the Counselling Course in question demands an inner personal journey. This is why the Formators’ courses in Bangalore are so good: they demand that formators reach a deep self-awareness. Pope Francis in Cracow this summer asked that we train priests and religious in discernment and accompaniment, not so much to give people instructions, as to help them come to their path themselves. This is only possible with critical self-awareness.

Back in 2000 in the England Vicariate we suffered a serious crisis of confidence with the departure of our former Provincial, a man much loved and respected. But the initial sense of catastrophe was a stimulus for us to find a new way of sharing and supporting one another. Led by two religious sisters of the Selly Park Congregation we came to way of sharing at our Vicariate retreats in a way that we mutually supported one another and derived strength through weakness. The pattern of this sharing, learnt through pain and tears has been continued and developed over the last 15 years and has made so many other things possible … lectio divina …Ignatian meditation.. sharing about St.Michael’s letters etc.. God does indeed form us in mysterious ways.

This leads me to a final point: we should never overlook the hidden blessing of a crisis in order to seize a chance to grow in the spirit. Sometimes it is only when we are desperate, after a bereavement… a time of depression... an experience of falling in love... a realisation that we have an addiction problem … a nervous breakdown.. that we become open to receiving help from others and gain a new opportunity for ongoing formation. St.Paul was very familiar with this. His plea to God to escape from pain (2 Corinthians 12) when he was in deep torment received a calm assurance that ‘my grace finds full scope in your weakness’. Our human failings are God’s window of opportunity. If we have a sense of this we will always be open to ongoing formation, a pathway of Conversion.

Austin Hughes scj
Regional Superior