Brazil. Claretians from Argentina-Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay Mission gathered in the “Nossa Senhora do Mossungué” Retreat House in Curitiba – PR to reflect on the theme “The formation of the identity of the Claretian Missionary today – Men on Fire with Love.” All in all 22 Claretians are present in this IX Encounter of Formators and Formandi, ready to share the experiences of the formative way and to define goals for the formation at the South Cone level. The encounter started on January 18.
The reflection itself of our encounter of formators and formandi started on the 19th, with the presence of our adviser for these days, professor William César C. Pereira (from Belo Horizonte-Brazil) who started the encounter and we went through all the themes of these days. After the presentation and a brief introduction, Prof. William –praising the presence of formators and formandi to share, reflect and debate in the encounter – started by presenting the first pertinent theme: “The Societal Shades and Subjective Metamorphosis,” from the basis of our last Chapter document: “Called to live out our Claretian identity today – Men on Fire with Love.” The aim of the same was to give us a panoramic vision of the reality that surrounds us, and to tackle the historical questions that gave cause to the constitution of our present society. With this he gave us not only the anthropocentric vision of the reality, but the framework that involves the formation in our days and the challenge presented to it today.
We reflected on the theme of modernity and the perplexity of postmodernity, which are two ways of doing and realizing things. These historical stages configured the subjectivities of persons. We were going deeper into the way in which we do or realize things in our formative communities, of how we are heirs of these historical stages in which they themselves configure our formandi and our own formative styles. They bring us to re-think the formation and the new challenges that it implies. After a refreshing rest, we prepared ourselves to review again what was discussed in the morning plenary session, and touched themes that were coming out in the dialogue: community reflection and dialogue, flexibility and rigidity in formation, the borderline between formator and formandus, inculturation, testimony, among others. All this, in addition to all that is happening in the formation of the missionaries in the present of our Congregation. Then, we had a little sharing in couples about the phrase: “We used to live a prohibition of pleasure, and now after the ’60s we are living the obligation of pleasure.” The sharing was rich, and the impressions themselves were diverse.
After the plenary session, Prof. William asked each participant to write a concrete case about the formation, in such a way that these cases would be written the following day. In the evening we watched all together a film and, after it, we shared the joy of celebrating one more year of life of Fr. Gustavo Carnero, Prefect of Formation of the Province of Argentina-Uruguay.
Adriano Dídimo Kutassi, cmf.
Pedro Alfonso Caballero, cmf.
