(a) Deformation for reformation
To form is to give shape to something. In truth, to form involves removal of certain things on a substrate so as to be left with the desired figure. It also involves putting or adding something on a substrate so as to get the intended figure. Formation therefore involves a negative aspect of removing something and a positive aspect of adding something in order people can get the intended figure. It may be said that formation is therefore deformation for reformation, or one may also say ‘destroying in order to build’. The best image one can think of here is the image of the potter. The potter does whatever he wishes with clay in his hands. He can form vases and destroy them in order to make better one or simply different ones. Formation is one of the essential aspects of the Institute that our Founder never joked with. This is why from time to time he loved telling his seminarians, “I am interested in your formation” (SL. 67). To remind them that their formation had a specific goal, he always said, “if you don’t prepare a good measure of virtue here (in the seminary), when you will be in the missions rather than saving souls you will run the risk of losing your faith” (SL. 90). The positive aspect of formation to him included growing in virtue.
To ensure that that goal was achieved, Fr. Allamano was personally involved in formation, even where there was a person in charge of a given group. This was not because the Founder wanted to interfere with people’s duties or because he did not trust them. It was because he as the Founder was the one who was giving the spirit of the Institute, and he had to do it personally if his recipients were to be able to pass the same spirit to others. In any case, formation is a crucial aspect of any entity since it determines the future of the given entity, and therefore the Founder had to be sure the foundation of the Institute’s future was guaranteed. Luckily for Fr. Allamano, he was made a formator immediately after his ordination, and practically throughout his life he was involved in some way in the formation of the clergy. We can therefore authoritatively say that if there is a task that took a great part of Fr. Allamano’s time, energy yes, and life, it was formation. Due to his experience in such matters, our Founder, speaking to the young missionaries just before they left for the missions, he always reminded them “the degree of good you will accomplish in the missions depends on your detachment from everyone and everything” (SL 241). In other words, their capacity to remove obstacles that attached them to people and things would form them into authentic tools in the hands of God, for the benefit of the people and for the glory of God. Better put, their capacity to deform their desires would form them into genuine instruments of God’s merciful love to the people.
(b) Formation and education
Having been also involved in academic work as a lecturer of Moral theology, Fr. Allamano knew the inseparable character of formation and education. He did not need to be told that educating a person is forming the person since education is one of the key tools of formation. Fr. Allamano’s constant reference to intellectual work and capacity pointed to their necessity in genuine and effective formation. It was his understanding of the significance of intellectual capacity that made him to say always that an ignorant priest does more harm than a wicked one. It was for the same reasons that he reminded the young missionaries the saying of St. Francis de Sales: Protestantism was (a result of) the ignorance of the clergy. That look of things differentiated our Founder from Bishop Perlo who would not have minded collecting people from the streets to make them missionaries immediately. Even today, the prominence of intellectual capacity in the formation journey should not be underestimated. If our Founder was to speak today to us, he would either tell us categorically that “a missionary without knowledge is an extinguished lamp” (SL. 143) or that “for a missionary, holiness is not enough, for there is also need of knowledge” (SL. 142). In other words, in as much as holiness is our main goal in the Institute, if a missionary is to be useful to the world, he must by all means have knowledge. To our Founder the term ‘knowledge’ involved the intellectual capacity of the person and the possibility to learn all that one was supposed to know to be a mature, stable and reliable person. Fr. Allamano was not making up these things. Speaking to the people of Israel, God once told them through the mouth of prophet Hosea, that since they had rejected knowledge, he was also rejecting them from his priesthood (Hos. 4:6). If God can reject a person from priesthood because he lacks knowledge, who would dare rake people in a missionary Institute to prepare them to be missionaries when signs are clear they have low understanding capacity – and especially in this century?
Fr. Allamano wanted knowledgeable missionaries, because their knowledge would help them to understand the world around them and the people they were serving. Only then would they be able to change the world into something better. The Founder did not need to be told that education developed his missionaries’ perspective of looking at life as gift to be donated to others, and in the light of the gospel. This is why speaking of piety and knowledge he once said, “Piety can make a good hermit; but learning, together with piety, will make a good priest. When I refer to learning, I mean the attainment of all the knowledge necessary to become a good missionary.”
Today, we also know that education in formation helps us to build opinions and to have points of view of things in life. Certainly not all points of views are correct. That is why education in formation has to be directed at discovering the voice of him who speaks in silence: God. Even scientific knowledge should lead us discover the author of reality. The formative process today should ensure that education in seminaries and houses of formation should improve not only formees skills, but also develop their personalities and attitudes, since this is one of the key areas from which conflicts and misunderstanding come in religious life today. Today, Fr. Allamano would easily tell us that we should strive not only to instill skills to our formees through education, but also through it to put foundation of their faith and their moral habits. That is the only way we can affirm that education in formation transforms the person into a better being, giving him both happiness and prosperity in his quest to search God and to do his will. Even the attitudes with which formees study are essential to be evaluated. One who sees studies as a tool through which God points to his vocation studies honestly. Such a formee will avoid the temptation of copying or stealing exams, since he knows that after studying well and praying seriously, the fruits of an exam that is honestly done is the voice of God. One who sees priesthood as a step to good life or as a step to avoid family responsibilities and pressures of life will do anything to attain it. To such a formee, priesthood is a “must get” goal. He will also view studies as a tool of achieving his intended goal, and in studying, he will use any means, legitimate and illegitimate to get the required grade. Why? Because for him the outcome of his exams is not an indicator of the voice of God. This means that in formation the candidates must be made to see studies as an instrument through which God speaks, and not just as an instrument of empowerment. It is also important to be attentive not to over-emphasize the academic dimension. At the end, balance is what is needed. That is why Fr. Allamano also said, “Study without piety makes heretics. You should deepen your piety as you increase your knowledge. Piety helps with everything.”
(c) Formation and the sense of existence
The emphasis with which the Founder spoke about formation tells us that he had no doubt that formation was the next higher task after generation (giving birth). Bringing someone in the world is a huge task of parents. Without it, we would not be present. We cannot downplay or undermine such a noble task, especially given that we also acknowledge that human beings alone cannot bring anybody in the world if God does not play a role in it. The task of giving a person existence has by all means to do with cooperation with God, and that is never a mean task. We cannot also ignore that in families, that task of generation is also a fruit of love, and therefore a reflection of the love between the people involved. Given that God is love, bringing one in the world is a complex role of God through the parents. Since no one is born by bad luck, even those who are born in other situation other than the family set up, they are also willed by God for his own reason. However, the task that is even more enormous is the task of putting the sense of existence in the person. That task is almost like giving the person a second life. Given that existence without a sense is nonsense, it means that life without meaning is useless. That is why bringing up a person is in actual sense another way of giving birth to him or her. The task of bringing up the person could also be called formation.
Formation is the process of giving a person the meaning of life. In other words, showing the person his origin, pointing to the reasons of being in the world, as he manuevers his way towards his destiny. Our parents begin that task by laying the foundation of openness to learn. Later, society helps us to discover more as we mature to be able to choose our vocations. Aware of the essentiality of formation in instilling the rationale of being, Fr. Allamano became adamant in ensuring that no one left Turin without proper formation. “If you don’t prepare yourselves here, what will you do in Africa?”, he would ask the young priests. In Swahili there is a saying that says, “kuzaa sio kazi, kulea mwana ndio kazi” which can be roughly be translated as “giving birth is not really a big deal; bringing up the child is the real test”. To Fr. Allamano, the usefulness and utility of his missionaries lay not in them just being missionaries, but in being well formed, enough to be able to bring effective positive change in the lives of the people, and in making Christ known, loved and served. The missionary had to discover first the meaning of his life as a gift of God to others, and second the meaning of his consecration as a tool of God for the sanctification of the world. He who failed in that test failed also the test of being a missionary. This brings us to the other aspect of formation according to Fr. Allamano.
(d) Formation as witnessing
When we talk of witnesses we refer to people who have seen or experienced a given thing, and not those who have just been told something about it. That is why we say the apostles were witnesses of Christ, his life and his teaching. In fact, Jesus himself told them that they were his witnesses (Lk 24:48). Later, themselves would affirm the same to the world: of these things we are witnesses (Acts 5:32). The gospel of John tells us that John the Baptist was a witness to the light that had come into the world, and not the light itself (Jn. 1:8). Fr. Allamano, talking to his missionaries at the Mother House, made it clear that if they were not holy before going out of that house, to Africa, then they would have nothing to offer to the Africans. He was certainly right. A key element in the lives of the witnesses is the centrality of Christ in their lives. Only Christ’s presence gives weak human beings the capacity to be transforming tools in the hands of God. The transformative power takes place due to the power of the Holy Spirit in the person. That power is what made John the Baptist jump for joy in the womb of Elizabeth, when the Virgin Mary visited her.
Fr. Allamano was convinced that formation was not meant to give people technical capacity only. It was not meant to create good professors, technicians and experts in various field, but to prepare witnesses who in turn would go not to offer information and intellectual content to the people of God, but to present Christ. To Fr. Allamano, formation was therefore a way of giving testimony. In truth, this is what formation (and education) should actually be even today! This applies not just to formation houses and seminaries, but also to Catholic schools. Lack of this aspect in our schools today is evident through the lack of discipline that is witnessed every now and then. One time the teaching profession was highly thought of, because teachers were witnesses. They were not meant to prepare professionals for the society, but people who had a sense of identity, sense of direction and sense of belonging. Such people were good people in the simplest meaning of the term. They respected social norms, including respecting whoever was elder than them, and offered themselves for the community. The teacher themselves were such kind of people, and that is why they were able to instill in the young the same values they lived. In other words, the teachers themselves were witnesses. Today, with education taking more a function of empowerment, the aspect of witness has suffered a great loss. Of course, this does not mean we should blame teachers and educators. The problem is the competitiveness of the world of today and the commercialization of everything we do. Therefore, the issue is deeper than we think. The point here is that just as teachers should be an extension of the parents (and hence witnesses), formators in houses of formation should offer not just academic material, but life of Christ. This is why speaking about superiors, the Founder said “It can happen that the superiors are not well formed themselves. If so, how can they form others in the spirit of the Congregation?” (SL. 56). As if that was not enough, while speaking about sanctity, the Founder once said “If I expect perfection in others, it’s only right that I find it in myself. So that those who come after me can find it in me” (SL. 123). However, Fr. Allamano was aware that the personal defects of a superior or a formator does not disqualify him from telling the truth. In other words, the fact that a superior has personal defects does not prohibit him from correcting others. If things were so, no one would ever correct another since all human beings are limited, weak and sinful (Rom. 3:23-26; Isa. 53:3). That is why for example the fact that a father in a family is a smoker does not mean that he can’t tell his son that cigarettes are dangerous. It is on this understanding that Founder noted that “superiors are to be respected regardless of their personal qualities, simply because they are superiors, i.e. the representative of God” (SL. 62). This did not mean nullification of the demand of being witness, it only laid bare the fact that the superiors and formators are as human as the formees and the members of the Institute. They too are in a journey to follow the Lord on the road to Calvary where he, the only genuine witness of God’s love, cleanses all those who make an effort to be like him by taking their crosses and following him. They too are in their lives fighting to say like St. Paul “follow my example as I follow the example of Christ” (2 Cor. 11:1).
(e) Formation as guidance of Freedom
It is not difficult these days to hear people complain that a candidate for religious life who was a university graduate has been dismissed. Those who give such kinds of complains see the formator as an insensitive creature. “How can he send away a university graduate?” they ask. Surprisingly, those who make such comments are not lay people in the streets, but religious people who should know better. If the issue of vocation was to be measured by the degrees one has, then those who have PhDs would be the most suitable persons to be religious. It is also common to hear people say “we can’t just let him go, he has been with us for several years”. In other words, for them, what matters is the number of years a person has spent in the formation house that determines if he can continue or not. Today, there is a need to re-look the formative process as a guidance of the gift of freedom in the person and as correction. This would automatically raise issues of the candidates’ capacity to respond to correction, before amplifying their academic qualification, and the number of years they have been in the houses of formation.
Such a move is founded on the significance of the second most important aspect in man after life itself: freedom. Basically, formation is meant to enlighten the person about the great gift in himself: freedom, and help him direct it in the appropriate direction. In other words, formation is supposed to correct a person in as much as it is supposed to empower him. The person is not corrected because he is bad, but because of the presence of the possibility of being swayed from what is appropriate. Fr. Allamano speaking to seminarians about formation of temperaments said, “It is not our fault that we participate in a malignant and corrupted nature through the original sin”. In other words, we did not choose to be part of a fallen nature caused by Adam and Eve. However, we can choose to ‘control our temperaments in order to prevent them from dominating us” (SL. 121). The Founder always presented formation as a task of ‘letting oneself be guided’. He was convinced that formation was the work of guiding young people to learn to discern their hearts correctly and to decide for themselves. Or better, the task of helping them to maneuver through many fires in their hearts, and choosing correctly the one to identify themselves with, and to keep alive for the rest of their lives. That is why he insisted “our temperaments are not to be destroyed but corrected through elimination of the evil inherited from the original sin, from relatives, from distorted education, or from our own carelessness and malice” (SL. 122).
Today it is important to open wide our eyes on the fact that formation is actually formation to freedom, which is in effect a wounded freedom. The effects of that wounded nature become evident when candidates join religious life for other reasons than sanctification of themselves and of others. Today, economic reasons continue motivating many young people into religious life; In other words, owing to survival instincts, threats of the harsh situation of life and the desire for a brighter future, many re-direct their lives into religious houses. If formation is taken as a formation of freedom of the person, it becomes imperative to guide individuals who have been robbed of the freedom to choose other vocations by internal and external pressures, to understand that God calls people in strange ways, and therefore their presence in the houses of formation is not really a mistake. This is why the Founder said “if a person enters the Institute for other intentions, he is supposed to leave, if it is not possible to straighten out his intention” (SL. 45). In other words, Fr. Allamano knew that with the wounded nature, it was not impossible to enter the formation house with other intentions.
Aware of the corrective aspect of formation, he encouraged seminarians to be open to be molded into tools of evangelization and not just to conform with the demands of the formative system. Fr. Allamano’s sentiments reveal essential element of forming one’s freedom: tolerance. Tolerance is the synthesis of firmness and gentleness. It is an indispensable quality that borders love and forgiveness. Fr. Allamano’s sentiments tell us that action on a person should be taken only when it is evident that he is unable to re-direct his freedom to the good. Until then, all have a duty to continue instructing and correcting the person no matter how long it takes. To do that, we have to overcome the biggest challenge that hinders tolerance: self-righteousness. Self-righteousness is defined by the Oxford dictionary as the excessive consciousness and insistence of one’s rectitude. It is the behaviour of thinking that one’s ideas and behaviour are morally better than those of other people. In lay man’s language it is the behaviour of a person of thinking that he or she is holy than others. Of course, it is an annoying tendency. One which involves narrow-minded moralistic conduct which also includes intolerance of opinions and behaviours of others. Given that formation is the direction of people’s freedom, a balanced capacity to give others the space to be themselves and to grow is necessary. That balanced capacity is what tolerance is all about. Fr. Allamano was a very tolerant person. That is why many people always wondered aloud, “does this man ever get annoyed?”
(f) Formation and Tradition
There is a Swahili saying that says “mwacha mila ni mtumwa” which can be roughly translated as “he who chucks his tradition is a slave”. The saying teaches that either one is rooted in something or sways aimlessly to whatever comes. Fr. Allamano knew that it was a dangerous thing to separate formation and tradition. Even today, tradition represents a critical base of culture. And as such, traditions reinforce values such as freedom, faith, integrity, personal responsibility and industriousness, etc. Talking about the necessity of formation, the Founder told seminarians to avoid little abuses of the spirit, because omissions and commissions would end up changing the spirit of the Institute. He was not wrong. As he noted, we always start well, then “Little by little you let customs that are not according to the spirit of the Founder seep in. You begin to lengthen the recreation time, change the kinds of food and neglect the punctuality required by the timetable. Soon the community is changed” (SL. 57).
Fr. Allamano, aware that tradition offers a forum to showcase role models and celebrate things that matter, wanted the young missionaries to know that it was not a positive thing to keep changing things in the name of modernity. If anything, such a way of doing things showed lack of stability. Traditions remind us that we are part of a history that defines our past, shapes our today and who we are likely to become in future. That is why the Founder objected to the same claim that we make even today: times have changed. Speaking to the young missionaries, the Founder said, “you say that times have changed. No! It is the spirit that has changed” (SL. 57). Fr. Allamano knew that ignoring traditions creates the danger of destroying people’s identity, and that is why formation could not be done on the whims of what people thought at a given time. Even today, Fr. Allamano continues to point out how ‘little’ omissions can end up derailing the Institute from its original spirit (or tradition). He was always against such tricks because he knew the importance of tradition.
When Bishop Perlo began doing things hurriedly, overlooking even formation of missionaries in the name of churning out more missionaries in a shorter time, Fr. Allamano told him “this is not my spirit”. Another time, the Founder also said, “I want our Society to go slowly in order to advance we” (SL. 82). In addition, aware that Bishop Perlo was doing all that to have people for more missions, he said to him “Be few! We don’t have a mania for having much land (much mission territory) and we don’t have the hands (personnel) to work it. Better a few missions but well looked after…” (D Agasso, pg 175). In other words, Fr. Allamano’s spirit was never one of thirsty acquisition of territories (missions) just to have the name of the Institute in many countries when in truth those missions had no impact on people’s lives. Fr. Allamano’s tradition was written in ‘the good must be done well and without noise’. That is, his aim was to develop a tradition that few things be done in an exemplary manner, not many done in a reckless manner. Probably even today if the Founder was to speak to us he would ask the same question: why the hurry to be everywhere when many of the missions where you have been are still crawling like a toddler trying to stand up and walk? The Founder would certainly wonder aloud: why should you have the excitement of new openings when the places you have been working for ‘centuries’ have not felt your impact? With who are you competing, that you have to fill the globe with empty presences? If Fr. Allamano was to speak to us today, we would probably have no answers to the many questions he would shoot at us.
In as much as the Founder pointed to the importance of tradition, it would be untrue to say that he wanted the Institute to remain the same forever. In other words, the emphasis about tradition did not mean denouncing dynamism. The Catholic Church itself is over two thousand years old, and in as much as it has retained a well-guarded tradition, it has also evolved to be what it is today: a mature Church that does not look at things the way they were seen a thousand years ago. Even Jesus compared a scribe who becomes a disciple of the Kingdom of God with a wise householder who knows to bring out the old and the new (Mt. 13:52).
In the midst of his insistence about remaining true to the spirit (or the tradition) of the Institute, Fr. Allamano demonstrated a great openness to change. This is to say that his firmness about tradition did not make him rigid or inflexible. In the story of Fr. Allamano that we have read so far, it is evident that the Founder’s openness to change can be seen in his obedience to his superiors. In as much as he had his own good ideas, appropriate opinions, and clear intentions, Fr. Allamano never got stuck in them stubbornly. Even when he knew he was sure and on the right, if his superior took the opposite decision, Fr. Allamano respectfully shelved his good idea and fully supported his superior’s idea. He was always convinced that the leaders in the Church had a wider view of things. Second, in addition to obeying leaders in the Church, Fr. Allamano was ready to identify the will of God in reality and to do it willingly. That is how he ended up seeing the leaders of the Church as tools of God through which he did whatever he wanted. Lastly, Fr. Allamano’s openness was clear in the organization of the Institute. Religious Institutes are given direction through general chapters and elections. Fr. Allamano convoked a general Chapter in 1922, giving the chapter members a chance to change the face of the Institute. Aware that sometimes such meetings are used only to stamp authority and retain the status quo (hence to avoid dynamism), Fr. Allamano encouraged turning to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, if such meetings were to be fruitful. He regretted the fact that Religious Institutes were in decline in many aspects due to such retrogressive moves of trying to be what they had always been. Speaking to his missionaries about that issue he said,
How does this happen? Oh, that chapter! Those elections! You pray in front of the Blessed Sacrament, you invoke the light of the Holy Spirit, but then instead of following the divine light of the Holy Spirit, you follow the light of your own selfishness, individual tastes, and party spirit. ... and what comes out are such superiors! (SL 57)
In other words, Fr. Allamano expected that whenever there are elections that are supposed to reveal the direction that God wants the Institute to take (regardless of our wishes) we are supposed to be open to the spirit of God, and without defending traditions that are out of date, vote as the spirit whispers into our ears. This is to say, Fr. Allamano knew that as much as tradition was key in ensuring stability and continuity of the Institute, openness to the power of the Holy Spirit who gives new life and progressivity in all that he does was needed. Today as we reflect on these issues, we discover that even the charism has to be lived dynamically. Even as we ask ourselves “what does the charism expects us to do here”, we have to learn to apply it in our own context. That way we retain it and at the same time live it differently.