JOURNEY OF A SALESIAN SEMINARIAN Stages of Formation

Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me and I will make you become fishers of men. And immediately they left their nets and followed him’. (Mk 1, 17-18)

Every salesian brother and salesian priest is one who has responded to this call of God to serve Him and His flock in the Salesian Society, following the charism of St. John Bosco. He lives out this call in a loving encounter with God and in a permanent dedicated service to the young. There are 15750 salesians, n. priests and n. brothers working in 129 countries for the well-being of poor and abandoned young people across the globe.

But, one becomes a Salesian whether priest or brother only after having undergone years of formation in holiness of life, study, work and salesian-spirit as prescribed by our constitutions (the rule book). From the moment a boy or young man expresses his desire to join the salesian society he is closely followed, formed, assisted to discern and examined whether fit for the salesian way of life. We call this process ‘formation’.

Formation consists of six stages – aspirantate, pre-novitiate, novitiate, post-novitiate, practical training and theologate – spread out into ten to fourteen years for salesian brothers and priests respectively. These are the six stages of formation – the journey of a salesian candidate.

Aspirantate

Aspirantate is a centre for vocation guidance. This stage introduces students into salesian style of life, spirit of Don Bosco and his concern for poor boys. It would be full of activities, study, prayer and work. Moreover the students will have ‘live-in’ experiences in different community a month or so.

He is then, promoted with his consent, his parents and the report of the superiors to Pre-novitiate.

Pre-novitiate

Pre-novitiate is a time to discern his vocation. Here, he is helped to mature as a human being and as a good Christian. To this end, he is guided into psycho-sexual maturity, physical growth, introduced into prayer life, Eucharist & other sacraments, Marian devotion; and salesian apostolate (youth work). He is encouraged to pick up as many skills as possible like music, dance, drama, singing, writing, communication etc. It lasts for a year.

At the end of the year the candidate, if suitable he is admitted to the Novitiate.

Novitiate

Novitiate is the beginning of salesian religious experience. In this he carefully examines the motives for his choice to be salesian, makes certain of his suitability for this call with the help of his Novice master. More importantly, here he is helped to gradually develop his salesian identity. This stage consists of initiation into interior life by deepening one’s relationship with God through Word of God, Eucharist and personal prayer; experience of fraternal life (community life); assimilation of salesian charism by studying the constitutions (Rule Book), life of St. John Bosco, and his system of education.

Normally, this stage is for 365 days – one full year. At the end of this stage, if he is found suitable, he makes his first commitment to the Lord as a Salesian. He thus becomes a member of the Society with temporary vows.

Post Novitiate

Post-novitiate continues the process of religious maturing which he began in his novitiate. It is a special time for integration of faith, culture and life through his philosophical and secular studies. Besides, it trains him for the phase of Practical training which follows immediately. Philosophical studies addresses questions basic to life like God, religion, death, after-life, meaning of life, good, suffering leading into a formation of mind for right reasoning. Secular studies (bachelors or masters) in other colleges, helps him be introduced into life sciences (biology, chemistry, physics), Mathematics and human sciences (sociology, psychology, economics, commerce). It is an opportunity to understand the society, culture and life through the subjects and their first hand experience. 

It lasts 4-6 years. At the end of the stage the candidate becomes a convinced salesian, with mental equanimity and sound reason.

Practical Training

All along the period of formation importance is not only given for study and prayer but also to pastoral activities of our mission. He is trained all through since his aspirantate in theory, and practice how to work with the young. This phase is his first hand experience of being a ‘salesian’ in the field. Here he grows in his salesian vocation and checks his suitability to this way of life – praying, playing, working and always accompanying the young like a guardian angel. It lasts normally for 2 years.

After this stage, the candidate in all maturity, through prayer and discernment opts to commit himself as a salesian either as a priest or brother for all his life. Hereafter the period of specific formation for salesian brother or priest commences respectively.

Theologate

Salesian Brother

A salesian brother is given opportunity to deepen his knowledge of salesian heritage – the tradition and history. Besides, he undergoes theological studies for two years.

Salesian Priest

A salesian priest undergoes a period of theological formation that crowns his preparation to priesthood. Here he is given opportunity to learn and experience in depth, Christ the priest, Word of God, history of the Faith, the Church, Canon law, Salesian spirit etc.  He deepens his spirituality to become another Christ to all who meet him. The phase trains him to be a good catholic salesian priest after the heart of St. John Bosco. This lasts for three and half years.

At the end of first year he becomes lector, the second year acolyte, the third year deacon and after six months priest.

Conclusion

The journey does not end here. All life is a Vocation; all life is formation. He then continues to learn all along his life with the evolution and dynamism of life, the world and the young in on going formation.

Psychology of the Gospels

‘No one should pretend to understand what one does not.

Only fools and charlatans know everything and understand nothing.’[a]

With all the hype of Christianity to be an authentic religion, Jesus as God in the form of human, and the salvific/redeeming power of his message every one attends to gospels one time or another in his/her life time. Despite nearly two thousand years of scholarship, research and study of the Bible especially the Second Testament (NT), the text remains vulnerable in the hands of the ignorant readers. We swing between two extremes from reducing it to a mythical genre of ancient literature filled with spectacular events, extraterrestrial beings, miracles (supernatural actions) and morals to treating it like any other modern biography of a spiritual person gifted with extra ordinary powers. This may seem exaggerated, however is convincing as we examine our attitude towards gospels in this case the whole Bible. Blinded by the modern jacket on the one hand, the gossips of antiquity on the other we usually fail to discern the authentic nature of the gospels, ‘the psychology of the gospels’, thus ending up with the distortion of its message. One can find numerous evidences of such distortions at different levels and at different times in history inside and outside Christianity.

The gospels contain data concentrated on ‘the message/good news i.e. Jesus of Nazareth’ of the first quarter of the first century AD, as it has been handed down by traditions (apostolic tradition). At the death of Jesus of Nazareth, the followers of Jesus who have seen, lived, heard him kept alive the memory of this founder through word of mouth in preaching, teaching and worship. C.H. Dodd names them as ‘living voice’. We may become apprehensive of oral tradition as the vehicle of the message, as it is liable to many slips between hearing a thing and repeating it to another person.  True, but the early followers of Jesus were Jews. Among Jews of that time there was a custom that the disciple was responsible for remembering and faithfully handing on the teaching of his master. The disciples of Jesus however, would not have given a word-for-word repetition as in the Jewish schools. They were practical teachers concerned to carry the meaning across to their hearers. In all probability, they would have recasted sayings, inserted an explanatory comment, to make it more applicable to the existing situation as the message was carried across borders and cultures; or, introduced an unbalanced elaboration of certain aspects of the sayings of Jesus, provoked by the debates against non-Christian public or even within Christian community, so much on the conscious side. With the growing understanding of the unceasing impact of the unconscious mind in our thoughts and actions, contemporary scholars unearth numerous biases that run undercurrent in the Jesus material of the gospels.  We have evidences of such inclusions. Moreover, the hypothesis is reasonable.

With the years, they became traditions; some took the written form as collections of sayings of the Lord, collections of miracles, and collections of infancy and passion narratives. Scholars contend Paul, who was not part of the inner-circle of Jesus, to have known Jesus’ sayings from the oral tradition, and used the authourity of the body of material circulated under the title ‘collection of sayings of the Lord’ to communicate the message in his letters.

At some point, the early Christians combined the sayings and other traditions to form a larger composition of the life of Jesus. Far from presenting mere historical facts, the writers intended them to be a written record of the living voice (tradition) as passed on to them by the early missionaries.[1]  In the traditions and written documents, as a result we find a double strain: a report of certain happenings, together and inseparably interwoven with an interpretation of these happenings, in other words ‘fact’ plus ‘interpretation’. They were reports of the faith of the early church, illumined by the risen-Jesus-experience.  Such an ‘enlightened memory’ was the ‘Jesus-material’, the reservoir at the disposal of evangelists inside early church. Luke writes in his dedicatory: “Many writers have undertaken to draw up an account of the events that have happened among us, following the traditions handed down to us by the original eye-witnesses and servants of the gospel [the umbrella term for the latter group is ‘early missionaries’].” (Lk 1.1) One such written document at hand is the Gospel of Mark,[2] the earliest canonical gospel (65-70 CE), which echoes the living voice telling the story than other gospels.    

Gospels of Mathew, Luke and John are an elaborate account of the message/goodness in style based on these materials. Mark, as mentioned above is more a compiler than an author. He reproduced what had come from traditions and other written documents with little attempt to write them in his own way, unlike Luke, Mathew and John who present them in chorological, pedagogical, and theological characters respectively. Moreover, the substantial unity in Mathew, Mark and Luke proves in all probability that Mark has been a basis of narrative for Mathew and Luke. This however does not deny their use of other Jesus material, which is obvious in their content. Gospel of John of course, has been a fruit of another tradition, quite different from the rest. Adapting himself to the pattern of Greek-speaking east – Ephesus, his work abounds with sophisticated theology, symbolism and Imagery. In gist, the canonical gospels communicate facts with the intention of bringing out as forcibly as possible the central belief, the belief in risen Jesus. To this end, they seek the aid of symbolism and imagery present in Jewish poetry and prophecy.

The fourth gospel, for example tells the readers “you will see heaven wide open, and God’s angels ascending and descending upon the Son of Man” (Jn 1.51) as it is about to begin its account of the public career of Jesus. This does not mean that the gospel intends to describe the scene with winged beings visibly flying up and down. Instead, it meant that with his unique career, Jesus brings God and man, heaven and earth together as never before. This imagery is also present in the account of baptism - the beginning of his public ministry – in other gospels. It would be idle to ask what actually happened instead, to realize that the text presents something very important, a historic occasion, and a turning point in the career of Jesus. Its profound significance could not but be suggested only by the use of such solemn and impressive imagery.

Symbols and imagery thickly crowd the infancy narratives of Mathew and Luke, which is their prelude to the account of the public career of Jesus: ‘visit of angels, prophetic dreams, the marvelous star in the east, miraculous birth greeted with songs from the heavenly choir, all the appealing incidents noted in the Christmas carol and nativity play’. Again, they stand together to make clear that the birth of Jesus was a decisive moment in history, the beginning of something genuinely new. Such use of symbolism, as Dodd writes, is poetical. It means that the facts are viewed in depth as laden with implicit meanings. It also applies to miracle stories - the signs and symbols intended to affirm the fact that wherever Jesus was they experienced the presence and the power of God. These stories are therefore, the gripping power of the spiritual renewal, which the first Christians found in their encounter with Jesus. The question of their factual accuracy or possibility misses the purpose of its inception. Miracles (understood as a breach of the laws of nature) do not happen,[3] however the whole point of the gospel is that the circumstances were far from ordinary, in the presence of Jesus Christ. They are supposed to have felt the power of God in his presence.

At times, the scholars quote miracles and infancy narratives to prove the gospels as spiritual fabrication of the life of Jesus. But, we have made it clear that gospels were not meant to be pure historical narratives. They are content communicating the faith in history. Another proof of such hypothesis is the disproportionate space allotted to the last stages of the life of Jesus: ‘the arrest, trial and execution of Jesus and the events immediately preceding and following it’. The events have had such an impression on those involved and witnessed all the writers invariably go into details. Another reason most probably is the fact of its importance as the death and resurrection of Jesus was perceived as the final conflict between the power of evil and God for our salvation.

Gospels therefore, are neither biography nor spiritual fiction, sayings, book of miracles instead a text that expounds the living faith of the people who lived with Jesus and his disciples. Accordingly it sheds insights on Jesus, his life and mission and through him the manifestation of the love of God in our lives.

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             [a] Adapted from Antony Chekhov (1860-1904), Russian playwright and master of the modern short story. 

                  [1] The early missionaries proclaimed the fulfillment of the divine revelation in Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah and the beginning of a new era in which offered forgiveness for the past, spiritual power for the present and hope for the future.

                [2] Speaking about it, Dodd notes, “[i]n Mark, within a very broad general scheme, there is a certain freedom and looseness of arrangement, and in his rather rough and informal style we seem often to overhear the tones of the living voice telling a story. We are probably near to the ‘original eyewitnesses and servants of the Gospel’ to whom Luke refers.” (pg. 36)

                  [3] Science is yet to understand the dynamics of matter.

Biblio:

Dodd, C.H. Founder of Christianity. London: Harper Collins. 

Brown, Raymond E. Introduction to the New Testament. London: Yale University Press, 2007.