Formation

«Having been called to holiness by God in virtue of baptism, we strive for perfect charity toward God and our fellow human beings by living our missionary vocation in community life and in the practice of the evangelical counsels, through the simple vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. In intimate fellowship with Christ and our brothers, we will be able to achieve a more complete personal, human, and Christian maturity and a more effective apostolic activity».

Rules of Life, 38

Initial Formation

The Scalabrinian religious derives his spirituality from the Founder’s Charism and from the living experience of the Congregation, lived within the local Churches. He brings it to full maturity through biblical reflection and in pondering the theology of the service which his missionary activity demands in order to bring about the divine plan of salvation.

«Because he is called to serve migrants of the most diverse origins, the Scalabrinian religious acquires a spirit of complete availability and adaptability to their needs, and develops a universal mind. He rounds out his formation with a psychological technical and above all pastoral preparation grounded on the knowledge and on the practical experience of human social and religious realities of the world of migration».

Rules of Life, 16

Formation to the Scalabrinian religious life is a journey, whose goal is to help recognize, interiorize and develop those values and attitudes that show the vocational aptitude, which is “the sign of the call and the fruit of the response” (General Project of Scalabrinian Information. Disciples of Jesus in the Footsteps of Scalabrini, 81-83).

Formation Project

«Our formation brings into our lives the fundamental characteristics of the Congregation’s mission and nature».

Rules of Life, 16

«The Congregation’s life and growth are the work of Divine Grace and of the dedicated way all religious live out their mission in the service of migrants according to our Founder’s Charism»

Rules of Life, 18

This is the principle of unity of the Congregation and, because of its fecundity, it is the source of the diverse ways in which the one’s Scalabrinian vocation is lived.

The General Project of Scalabrinian Formation aims at:

• assuring the solidity and effectiveness of formation, seen in its diverse aspects and in its full cycle, and ensuring the unity of its essential contents;
• developing a typical Scalabrinian spirituality, in the sense of being part of an international and multicultural Congregation, the ecclesial communion, an originality of service to the migrants and to their conditions;
• guiding and the solidifying the formation process, both initial and ongoing;
• guaranteeing a specific charismatic formation.

(General Project of Scalabrinian Information. Disciples of Jesus in the Footsteps of Scalabrini, 23-24)

Houses of Formation

Ongoing Formation

«The purpose of ongoing formation is to help the Scalabrinian religious live out his vocation with maturity and joy, with creative fidelity and the capacity for renewal, as an ever present response to the Lord and to the challenges of the mission. This attitude is expressed in a capacity for discernment and reflection, and a commitment for an ever nourishing spiritual journey and a lifestyle which provides quality to every-day experience, while seeking the needed qualification to fulfill the mission with professional competency and foster a greater number of apostolic contributions.

The subject of ongoing formation is also the Scalabrinian community, which in the Church is the bearer and the witness of our Charism, as the Spirit’s gift, nourishing its members; the Scalabrinian community itself, however, is in need of ongoing renewal by being faithful to Scalabrini and of discernment in the Spirit. The community is the subject of ongoing formation even when it engages in the wisdom-reading of the migration phenomenon and gains the capacity to plan well its mission and to offer a vocational proposal in cooperation with those with whom it shares the spirit and the mission; this cooperation is also the source of spiritual renewal and offers motivations and criteria for evaluation along with guidelines for update.

For this reason the community itself, the subject of a spiritual and apostolic experience, is a project and lives according to a project and responds in unity to the Scalabrinian vocation».

General Project of Scalabrinian Formation. Disciples of Jesus on the Footsteps of Scalabrini, 10.1