- Most influential persons:
- My Dad Antony Vazhapilly
- Fr Albert Yelds MSC
- Sr Gùter MSC
- Their secret:
A person of deep spiritual credibility, lived rather than preaching. Empathetic and compassionate person, caring, prayerful, honest, and forgiving.
- Best lessons from my family:
- To be empathetic and Prayerful
- At the service of the poor and needy.
- Straightforward and to be honest.
- Helps in religious life:
- Person of prayer and contemplation.
- Keep up the time-table
- To be courteous and generous.
- Best help as a religious:
- Most helpful: Ministry and service.
- Next most helpful: Personal prayer and Meditation.
- Third most helpful: Reading and Studies.
- What I tried to give to formees:
- As a formator, the main aim and objective was to help a formee to understand and accept oneself, talents, able-to appreciate oneself and the other.
- Awareness of God’s unconditional love for the formee.
- Discerning one’s own vocation and learning to be content.
- Religious less mature than lay persons? How to help them mature:
Some formees need help because of the nuclear families often don’t have time because both parents are working. Due to this, they often take refuge in gadgets and gradually get addicted to them, busy with phony character, seeking attention, too much time with social networking, pornography addiction, gaming addiction, etc.
I wouldn’t say they’re not fully mature, and not God centered. If there are, this could be due to lack of Intra-personal Introspective abilities. Lack of self-discipline and irregularities in sleep due to too much use of gadgets. Naturally the whole emotional quotient deteriorates.
Often found them very resistive to correction, woth emotional outbursts and tantrums.
To help our young formees, we need to be sensitive to their unique needs. Appreciate them when appropriate with proper a response.
A formator need to be a living witness rather than expecting much from the formees.
Treat all the formees equally, without any favoritism based on caste or language or whatever, and accepting their cultural differences.
Truly today’s young people are very observant, but due to the watching videos in gadgets, their ability to help others doesn’t happen quickly. So, it’s important for formators to mirror the examples, where they can pick it up. If we ourselves struggle in these areas, how can we form the younger ones? Therefore we need to be beacons of light for the young ones.
- Other suggestions:
- A religious formator needs to be spiritually Integrated, in order to live easily their calling. Work and contemplative prayer should be the hallmark of good religious.
- Formator needs to have self-reflective abilities.
- Should be empathetic, impartial, honest and forgiving.
- Mistakes to avoid
- Avoid self- praise and boasting.
- Avoid rigorous and repetitive corrections.
- Don’t speak ill pf other members of the community.
- Avoid hasty decisions, judgmental attitudes and criticizing.
- Qualities of a good formator
- A mature, humane and humble person.
- A person with deep spiritual caliber, treating everyone equally.
- Able to discern and help the formees in discernment.
Sr Agnes MSC
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