On 17th May 2016 the Major Superiors and the delegates of Asmen came together for a meeting with our General Formation Secretariat. Br. Pio Murat, the General Councilor for Asmen briefed the gathering about the uniqueness and the challenges present in this journey. He asked the participants to brief about the nature of their respective jurisdiction with a particular reference to formation. The members also agreed to make the at most use of the formative initiative under the leadership of Br. Paul Kӧnig, the President of the conference. Br. Clarence Hayat our International Councilor for Formation for Asmen, explained in detail the formative collaboration expected from the members of the conference. He also briefed about the Ratio initiatives and the ongoing formative courses.
Although the challenges are many, the members of Asmen along with their delegates were ready to do something to improve the initiatives of initial and ongoing formation in their respective jurisdiction. Being a conference with vast territory involving many nations they have a real challenge to bring in Capuchin way of forming into their strategy and animation.
The challenges:
How to have formation & vocation drive in a context where our friars live amidst the other Christian Churches? What can we expect from such a reality? These are all two realistic questioned emerged during the discussions. While presenting the reality we shall try our response reflections through this and one more blog.
Reality and responses:
Doing formation outside the local context is a reality the friars have to consider. Few of their jurisdictions are with lots of Christians, most of them are immigrants working there. Being a Jurisdiction with few new vocations and also a unique situation where most of them have to send their students outside for formation. Although most of the jurisdictions are few in number, it is interesting to note that they do have new vocations. And the new comers should have fraternal experiences in true Capuchin Fraternities. The members felt the exigency to strengthen the fraternal reality.
“In countries like Turkey the vocation is rare, said Br. Pawel Szymala, But now young people asking to join us from Immigrant communities. And there we need to plan out more. We have many youth from different countries we could accompany them and help. They land up in Turkey and we don’t know where to guide them. Challenge is to help them do the discernment to know whether there is really a vocation to follow our way of life. To send them back to their places of origin is not possible.”
Br. Paul referring to the Asmen reality said “our Custody covers two vicariates together. Six countries and it is not easy to come together. The challenge for the brothers is that while they see the faith of the people and want to serve them should not forget to take care of their own faith. We are also like Greece and Turkey, the brothers have also the hooks to their respective mother provinces, although they are here. Thus we involve their major superiors in our deliberations.”
(To be continued…)