austraLasia 1635
Brothers' Assembly Cambodia: Accompaniment a key to early choice
PHNOM PENH: 25th August 2006 -- The Brothers' Assembly (EAO) is now drawing to a close. austraLasia hopes to run a résume of the events tomorrow, as the participants begin to make their way home around the region. Today, though, it seems valuable to take up the other function of this little 'link' around a scattered region - its formation role, with an outline of one of the discussions which took place on Day Four: accompaniment.
Little doubt in participants' minds that accompaniment is some sort of key to the initial discernment process. Fr Joseph Dung, from Vietnam had spoken of his experience of Salesian accompaniment for the Brother. Fr Dung is director of novices for VIE: he had been forced to reflect on the issue by a simple question from one of his novices - could a Brother be novice master? His off-the-cuff answer was that by any reading of the Constitutions, the answer would be yes! But his reflection on the question was that its intent was not so much whether or not it was a constitutional issue, but the role and figure of the Brother in the lives of those at a crucial stage of discernment in the context of Salesian religious life - accompaniment by a Brother seemed important to this discernment.
In practice this seemed to be the case too. Speaking with recently professed young Salesians, amongst whom this year were six Brothers, the newly professed Brothers themselves indicated the importance of the presence of a particular Brother in their pre-novitiate, as a valuable factor in their ultimate discernment during novitiate year. That Brother has now gone off to the missions. Fr Dung mused on what the strategic effect of that might also be, given the influence the individual had had on his young men.
Fr Chrys Saldanha added to the thinking by noting that while the documents are quite clear about the various stages of formation, one element appears to be not so clear - the initial 'harvesting'. He made the point that the moment a young man begins to make a choice for Salesian life, formation has begun. Accompaniment is a key even and especially at this stage. How to 'de-clericalise' this important first step? An accompaniment that from this early stage provides contact with a Brother, presentation of the right model.
And where is all this going in concrete terms? That element has been foremost in the Assembly's thinking. Province group discussions have been formulating steps as the discussions continues, focusing on elements that are core to consecrated life, consecrated witness, discernment and accompaniment in real terms.
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AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome. For queries please contact admin@bosconet.aust.com Try out BoscoWiki to be interactive. For RSS feeds, subscribe to www.bosconet.aust.com/RSS/rssala.xm A separate service entirely is called F/OSSERVATORE to help us keep abreast of trends in the digital world.
Brothers' Assembly Cambodia: Accompaniment a key to early choice
PHNOM PENH: 25th August 2006 -- The Brothers' Assembly (EAO) is now drawing to a close. austraLasia hopes to run a résume of the events tomorrow, as the participants begin to make their way home around the region. Today, though, it seems valuable to take up the other function of this little 'link' around a scattered region - its formation role, with an outline of one of the discussions which took place on Day Four: accompaniment.
Little doubt in participants' minds that accompaniment is some sort of key to the initial discernment process. Fr Joseph Dung, from Vietnam had spoken of his experience of Salesian accompaniment for the Brother. Fr Dung is director of novices for VIE: he had been forced to reflect on the issue by a simple question from one of his novices - could a Brother be novice master? His off-the-cuff answer was that by any reading of the Constitutions, the answer would be yes! But his reflection on the question was that its intent was not so much whether or not it was a constitutional issue, but the role and figure of the Brother in the lives of those at a crucial stage of discernment in the context of Salesian religious life - accompaniment by a Brother seemed important to this discernment.
In practice this seemed to be the case too. Speaking with recently professed young Salesians, amongst whom this year were six Brothers, the newly professed Brothers themselves indicated the importance of the presence of a particular Brother in their pre-novitiate, as a valuable factor in their ultimate discernment during novitiate year. That Brother has now gone off to the missions. Fr Dung mused on what the strategic effect of that might also be, given the influence the individual had had on his young men.
Fr Chrys Saldanha added to the thinking by noting that while the documents are quite clear about the various stages of formation, one element appears to be not so clear - the initial 'harvesting'. He made the point that the moment a young man begins to make a choice for Salesian life, formation has begun. Accompaniment is a key even and especially at this stage. How to 'de-clericalise' this important first step? An accompaniment that from this early stage provides contact with a Brother, presentation of the right model.
And where is all this going in concrete terms? That element has been foremost in the Assembly's thinking. Province group discussions have been formulating steps as the discussions continues, focusing on elements that are core to consecrated life, consecrated witness, discernment and accompaniment in real terms.
___________________
AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome. For queries please contact admin@bosconet.aust.com Try out BoscoWiki to be interactive. For RSS feeds, subscribe to www.bosconet.aust.com/RSS/rssala.xm A separate service entirely is called F/OSSERVATORE to help us keep abreast of trends in the digital world.
