Christian formation

The prayer of a Christian is the subject of his daily care in the process of spiritual development. We can say that without it and its dynamic development it is not possible for the spiritual progress of the Christian and the Church in which he or she lives. It is also a very extensive subject of research and scientific work in the field of theology and especially the theology of spirituality. Hence, it must be treated in a multi-faceted and multi-directional way. Among all the different categories of prayer, community prayer and common prayer are very important. This distinction is necessary because it reveals to us the truth that every prayer has a communal character, but it is not always common. However, prayer celebrated together is the source of Christian life and the Church, and it is the clearest and most readable testimony of faith.

Faith is a gift of God-an act of divine grace-rather than a set of beliefs or a well-developed cognitive understanding of spiritual things. As Pope Benedict XVI says in "Gospel, Catechesis, catechism", "Do not presuppose the faith but propose it… faith is not maintained automatically. It is not "finished business" that we can simply take for granted. The life of faith has to be constantly renewed. And since faith is an act that comprehends all dimensions of our existence, it also requires constantly renewed reflections and witness. The study shows the difference between knowing about God and actually knowing God. To determine the Christian formation of students of Columban College, Inc. in Olongapo City as the basis for Faith enhancement. It utilized the descriptive design of research using college students coming from different programs as the respondents. The researcher used a survey-questionnaire to generate significant responses from the respondents. Christian Formation is more than handing on of religious instruction. Its goal is growth in faith, which implies both formation and transformation, leading one to live out the Gospel as part of a believing community. Christian formation is a lifelong process. Everyone, including the parents, the catechists, and Religion teachers has been always a learner. The Catholic School on the Threshold of the Third Millennium states that "At its heart, the identity of the Catholic School in its role in the evangelizing mission of the Church and directed to the complete formation of the students". (CCE, 11)

"El sacerdote de Orihuela-Alicante, Domingo García, pronunció una ponencia sobre la formación integral del cristiano. En su exposición retomó el lema del encuentro “Verdaderos creyentes, discípulos y testigos de Cristo”. El ponente describió el creyente como aquel que tiene una fe que le hace capaz de reconocer a Jesús en su vida: “Se trata de un encuentro real con fuerza suficiente como para cambiar la vida de una persona”.
En relación con el discípulo, insistió en que ésta es una condición común a todo cristiano independientemente si es obispo, sacerdote, religiosa o seglar, y que por tanto es necesario “seguir creciendo en espiritualidad bautismal, es decir, en la conciencia de lo que une a todos los cristianos por encima de las diferencias que conlleva el servicio”. De esa consciencia del  bautismo, completaba, “surge la valentía apostólica”.
Por último, vinculaba la calidad del testigo a la calidad de su experiencia de Dios, y animaba a dar solidez al testimonio a través del estudio, la oración y la vida para aportar algo singular a la sociedad actual siendo, al mismo tiempo “uno de tantos”.
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How do practices contribute to the formation of the mind of Christ in community such that the community truly becomes the body of Christ?” This dissertation demonstrates that Christ acts on his Church through a complex interaction of community and practices to generate the identity, diversity, and virtue of his body. This is a controversial claim because many hold that the matter of virtue rightly consists of adherence to cherished foundations like Scripture and tradition accompanied by calls to obedience. Nonetheless, this study seeks to identify resources to help the Church imagine a virtue ethics appropriate to a 21st century communion ecclesiology. It does so by reading Richard Hooker as an ecclesial ethicist.

Examining Hooker’s accounts of Scripture, participation, and liturgical practices, the dissertation develops a Hookerian account that extends the ecclesial ethics of Stanley Hauerwas and Sam Wells on both ends. On the front end, it derives from first principles an account of how humans come to see themselves as part of the theodrama in which improvisation is required. On the back end, it grounds improvisation in a theory of mimetic virtue. Along the way it shows how a largely Barthian Christology coheres with a positive account of sacramental practices and that a Hauerwasian emphasis on practices is not sectarian. Hooker’s repudiation of appeals to timeless absolutes in ethical reasoning and his demonstration that the self-ordering of the Church is phronetic action means that contemporary “liberal accommodationism” and “postliberal traditionalism” can no longer coopt Hooker to justify their ideologies.

This year marks the 500 years of Christianity in the Philippines. Thus, the legacies of historic Christian mission and colonialism is highly regarded as monumental to Philippine history. The theological ethics of Christianity permeated in the Filipino people's lives indeed. In this paper, however, I argue that the known Filipino values need not be totally despised as scornful traits when it is rightly understood in the utterance of virtuous Filipinos. In fact in order for the Filipino to experience authentic Christian transformation, all our values need to be the stimuli of our actions and convictions, as these may be aligned to character formation that need to be enhanced through habituation in its right manifestation. In the first section, I will briefly survey the known Filipino values and highlight the negative implications that effectuated in a Filipino and the society at large. I shall also discuss in the next section a misconception in Evangelical theology that human beings are naturally sinful, thereby making all its faculties flawedeven that of the Filipino traits. In ending, I will synthesize the Filipino Value System and Christian Theological Ethics.

Spis treści
Formacja chrześcijańska – czy ma sens dzisiaj? Christian formation – does it make sense today?

ks. Dominik Kiełb
Pojęcie formacji chrześcijańskiej 15

ks. Michał Powęska
Jezus jako Wychowawca dla Szymona Piotra. Ewangelia Markowa a pedagogika dialogu 29

ks. Adam Pawlak
Wymiar pedagogiczny Dialogów Grzegorza Wielkiego 47

ks. Dawid Dudziak
Wychowanie duchownych do podjęcia posługi misyjnej według papieża Grzegorza Wielkiego 69

ks. Wojciech Witowski
Formacja mnichów iroszkockich według wybranych kanonów ksiąg pokutnych 85

ks. Michał Ludewicz
„Formacja do papiestwa”. Droga na Stolicę Piotrową w wybranych żywotach biskupów Rzymu z VIII-IX w. zawartych w Liber Pontificalis 103

ks. Łukasz Libowski
Kajdany, więzienie, uzda, jarzmo, pęta.
Hugona ze Świętego Wiktora rozumienie karności, czyli wykład zawartości drugiej części jego traktatu De institutione novitiorum (rozdziały X-XXI) 127

ks. Piotr Wilk
Wychowawca w miłości. Ryszard ze św. Wiktora, „De quatuor gradibus violentae amoris” – wstęp, przekład, komentarz 151

ks. Paweł Ślawski
Wykorzystanie modlitw eucharystycznych o tajemnicy pojednania w formacji liturgicznej i kształtowaniu postaw chrześcijańskich 191

ks. Radosław Banaś
Psychologiczne aspekty muzyki liturgicznej a wychowanie do dojrzałego przeżywania Eucharystii 203

ks. Roman Hopej Duszpastersko-formacyjny wymiar kultu Najświętszego Serca Pana Jezusa 221

ks. Michał Pierzchała
Znaczenie świadectwa wiary dla formacji chrześcijańskiej w rodzinie 245

ks. Jarosław Młodecki
Formacja chrześcijańska świeckich w świetle posynodalnej adhortacji apostolskiej Christifideles laici Jana Pawła II 267

Dariusz Cichoń
Katecheza jako forma formacji chrześcijańskiej w ujęciu ks. Franciszka Blachnickiego 279




Table of Contents
Christian formation – does it make sense today? (Polish) 9 (English) 12

Dominik Kiełb
The concept of Christian formation 15

Michał Powęska
Jesus as Pedagogue for Simon Peter. The Gospel of Mark and the pedagogy of dialogue 29

Adam Pawlak
The pedagogical aspect of the Dialogues of Gregory the Great 47

Dawid Dudziak
Formation of clergy to undertake missionary service according to Pope Gregory the Great 69

Wojciech Witowski
Formation of Iro-Scottish monks based on selected canons of penitential books 85

Michał Ludewicz
“Formation for the Papacy”. The Way to the See of St. Peter in selected lives of Roman bishops from VIII to IX centuries from the Liber Pontificalis 103

Łukasz Libowski
Shackles, prison, bridle, yoke, bonds. Hugh of Saint Victor’s understanding of discipline, i.e. an exposition of the second part of his treatise De institutione novitiorum (chapters X-XXI) 127

Piotr Wilk
The Educator to Love. Richard of St. Victor’s “De quatuor gradibus violentae amoris” – introduction, translation, commentary 151

Paweł Ślawski
Use of Eucharistic prayers on the mystery of reconciliation in liturgical formation and formation of Christian attitudes 191

Radosław Banaś
Psychological aspects of liturgical music and education to conscious participation in Eucharist 203

Roman Hopej
The pastoral and formative dimension of devotion of the Sacred Heart of Jesus 221

Michał Pierzchała
The importance of the testimony of faith for Christian formation in the family 245

Jarosław Młodecki
Christian formation of lay people in the light of the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Christifideles laici by John Paul II 267

Dariusz Cichoń
Catechesis as a form of Christian formation as reflected by Fr. Franciszek Blachnicki 279

This paper is actually a letter written to parents of ten students whom I (and three others) led through a rite of passage designed as an initiation to become disciples of Jesus Christ. The underlying assumption of this paper and the initiation experience itself is not that such a rite can serve as the constitutive basis of the initiate's status as a disciple; rather, the experience was designed with the goal of becoming a decisive reference point in the self-identity of the initiate's that would serve in their memory as the organizing principle for how they would henceforth understand themselves interior to the category of disciple. In addition to the reflection, worship, and prayer times (discussed in this document), my hope was to accomplish this by creating an experience of a prolonged contrasting tension between one's subjective experience with the objective world, that is, through pain confronted by beauty. This experience lends itself, I believe, to the posture of a disciple's faith, since through it we discover, as it were, the end of ourselves and the beginning of God, indeed the smallness of ourselves and the grandeur of God's creation. In other words, we learn not only that we are utterly dependent upon God but that we should prefer nothing else, since the God on whom we depend has shown himself to be so beautiful and so generous in his creative expressions and the in his giving creation to us for our care and enjoyment. Thus, the themes reflected in this letter reduce to one basic confession that the entire trip is designed to implant in the mind of each initiate as their foundation for the life of faith: "God is God and I am not." And there is nothing greater than precisely that truth.

My hope in publishing this paper here, in all its particularities, is that other Christian leaders might reproduce and/or improve upon this unique experience, for I am convinced it meets and great need in our culture.

Actual trail facts in retrospect: five nights, 53.71 miles, 11,358' of ascent, summited Windom Peak.

A video from the trip can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8I1HxZpcNM

Christianity functions as a seedbed for the epistemological divide over race in the United States. Building on Willie James Jennings’ call to consider who we have been formed not to see and to whom we belong, this paper urges theological schools to implement theory and practices of seeing and belonging across racial and ethnic lines that will form future leaders to enact beloved community in the church and society. Even as educators from the public sphere have issued a call to multicultural education, much of theological education continues to engage in monologue without a variety of racial and ethnic perspectives. This represents a critical issue of formation for persons being prepared to fill pastorates in a racialized nation, where the 2016 presidential election further exposed a deeply seated white supremacist ideology. Theological schools must attend to this formational task at both the theoretical and practical levels of the curriculum.

When the church came to implementing this idea of lifelong education, however, we face a twofold misunderstanding that proceeds to use control over the educational vision, despite our beliefs.  The first misunderstanding is that education is for children.  The press, media, and books about education all communicate, whether implicitly or explicitly, the fundamental belief that education is a work dedicated to children.  This misunderstanding is so deep that when we try to speak of education that is not for children, Maria Harris claims that we give it a name “adult” education to distinguish it from the so-called real thing.

This doctoral work has been modified, as Relationship Is the Transformative Space, to be made more widely accessible, and so the link has been Relationship is The Transformative Space has gone to print.

It can be found at the publisher as Relationship is the Transformative Space: http://wipfandstock.com/relationship-is-the-transformative-space.html

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"An Indian Initiative in Christian Formation: Reflections on the Vision and Mission of Dharmārām for an Indian Church" captures a set of important ideals for which it has been established in 1957. In an attempt to recapture the noble vision and mission of Dharmārām and to instil a passion for the same among those who associate with this noble Indian venture in Christian formation, a few reflections are offered in two parts. While the first part, “Faith Seeking Harmony of Life at Dharmārām,” tries to dwell on an ideal understanding of the vision and mission of Dharmārām, the second part, “Seeking Divine Harmony: Stalwarts of Dharmārām Synthesis,” offers a review on the contributions of three important persons who have attempted to realize the Dharmārām dream in their own inimitable ways, thus, becoming shining stars on the Dharmārām horizons.