2.3 – Mediation that accompanies

Finally, the third segment, which in some way represents the general pedagogic style.  The educator-formator of whom we have talked is an older brother (older sister), older in lived experience and in discipleship, who is placed alongside a younger brother/sister to share a tract of the highway of life, so that the younger one can better know himself and the gift of God, and decide to respond to him in freedom and responsibility. ⁸   The dimension of the ego that becomes the specific object of attention here is the relational ego.

The accompaniment is the Emmaus style, icon of any accompaniment in faith. But it is the style, above all, of the Holy Spirit, the “sweet guest of the soul”, the company of God in us, the interior iconographic expert that, with infinite creativity, forms the face of each person according to the image of Jesus. “His presence is always beside each man and woman, to lead all to the discernment of this own identity as believers and as called persons, in order to form and model that identity exactly according to the model of divine love.  The sanctifying Spirit tries to reproduce in each one this ‘divine stamp’, as a patient craftsman of our souls and ‘perfect Consoler.’” ⁹ So, it is fundamental that the young person feel the Spirit as a faithful friend, as memory of Jesus and his Word, as the one who will lead him to the full unveiling of the truth and wisdom of heart, as a guide with a watchful eye on Jesus and on persons called to make them his witnesses.

The awareness and joy in the “company” of the Spirit will make the young consecrated person ever more open to let himself be accompanied by an older brother, without expecting that he be perfect. One who entrusts himself to the Spirit also trusts the Spirit’s mediations; one who has learned to turn himself over to the Spirit does not fear—today when he is young-- to share a part of his story, entrusting it to the hands of an older brother. Tomorrow, when he is older, he will accept others’ leading him where he doesn’t know, and others’ girding him… Thus, trust, abandonment, giving over of self become typical virtues, as the fruit of this pedagogical activity.

From an… “agrarian”…point of view, after the tilling of the land (=education) and the sowing of the good seed (=formation) accompaniment implies all those attentions that the good farmer dedicates and reserves to the little plant that is about to grow.  Concretely, he stands beside it, in some way he sees it slowly flourish, as though his gaze favors its growth; he cares for it and protects it.

There are three essential characteristics of accompaniment (companioning) as pedagogical method:

-                                                                    The first depends on the real, physical sharing of life. To observe the conduct and to move from this to attitudes, and then to sentiments and motivation, it is indispensable to live in contact with the person with an intelligent attention. Daily life and living together are the best source of information for knowing an individual. Being able to pick up certain behavioral nuances, as reactions, likes, dislikes, emotions, depression, habits, jokes, intolerance, forgetfulness, nervousness, preferences, oddities, etc., enables having a relatively complete picture and being able more easily to reach identification of the general situation and of the central inconsistency.

-                                                                    The second condition is the competency-preparation of the educator-formator who, if he really wants to accompany a brother along the ways of the Spirit, must unite spiritual wisdom and knowledge of the human heart or of the laws of psychological development. Whatever, in short, permits him to intervene not only to indicate a point of arrival, but also to grasp the truth of the individual, at a conscious and unconscious level, to suggest a method for solving his problems and help him to let himself be formed by the Spirit’s action, overcoming resistance and fear. A skill like this can be fruit only of a regular and systematic journey of formation of the formator. It is not the skill of a psychologist, but of a spiritual man who, precisely because he is such, also uses human sciences to dispose a heart to welcome the Spirit.

-                                                                    Finally, perhaps the most peculiar and original element of accompaniment. From medieval Latin we know that this term comes from cum-panio, which would be “the one who has the bread in common”. ¹⁰  Accompanying a young person toward consecration does not mean simply giving a (spiritual) direction to his life, or anyway, offering only teaching or establishing a relationship that goes in a single direction; but it also means to do or celebrate an experience together, which will always be new and unrehearsed because it is an experience of God, between two persons who have made and are making a journey toward God. To accompany means essentially to share, and to share something vital like “the bread of the journey”, or rather one’s faith, the memory of God, experience of the struggle, of the searching, of love for him.. We are not saying that the formator necessarily has to reveal his interior life, as though the relationship of accompaniment was only a friendly kind, but that, in any case, he must be aware of the inevitable personal involvement of his journey as a believer, to accept being close to the one he accompanies and to share with him what he himself has already experienced as important for encountering God and letting himself be loved. A formator is never so convincing as when he is able to confess his faith; then he not only draws out the faith of the young person, but in some way enters into the interior of that same journey to have a new experience of God and let himself be formed by him. Older brother and younger brother, both accompanied by the spirit of God, the only Formator. It is not a simple friendship, theirs, but friendship or com-pany in the Spirit. ¹¹

At this point we can say truly that by accompanying a young person along the ways of the Spirit, the formator advances his ongoing formation.