3- Ongoing formation: many formation mediations

It is not always true that “experience teaches”, or that by erring or, even, “by sinning one learns”, ¹² or that “history is the teacher of life” or that “one has the right to make his mistakes” and other similar sublime pleasantries.  There are a lot of adults that always indifferently repeat the same errors (for which they regularly blame others) or who confuse maturity with a diploma of studies or with the natural fruit of old age. As far as history goes, it has also been said that the only thing that it teaches is that some, or maybe many, never learn anything from it.  And it is true that everyone’s right to make their own mistakes must be respected, but it would be even more dignified to help him recognize them and, possibly avoid them… If early formation does not propose a method by which to know oneself and begin to free oneself, or at least free the perception, OF is only theory and appearance, at the most, coercion (by the one organizing it) and fiction (by the one undergoing it). But if early education-formation-accompaniment offer an authentic route of self-knowledge and liberation from one’s conflicts, then all of life becomes a progressive route of education-formation-accompaniment, and the individual can work on his own formation openness. Thanks to this, every life circumstance (persons, jobs, challenges, difficulties, temptations, crises, falls, the unforeseen, provocations, failures, calumny, more or less unusual requests, requests that exceed my likes and abilities..), at any moment and in any context, can become formative mediation, an occasion for OF, as a singular mediation through which the Father creates me, molds me, opens prospects for me, creates a desert around me… to form the sentiments of the Son in me.

Or rather, from the one formation mediation of early formation to the many formation mediations of OF .

Here our conversation could open in many directions. We are choosing just one area or example, that of prayer, because we do not always grasp the educational-formation value and the “company” value of oration.

If it is the Lord, or better, the most Holy Trinity that forms and transforms, the daily rhythm of OF is punctuated above all by the Trinity’s intervention, and by how much the Trinity allows us to enter into contact with it, starting off with that spirit of prayer, basically, which is much more than the so-called practices of piety. We mean that this relationship is at the origin of life, of vocation, identity, formation the truth of the person…. In fact the Father-God is the educator who, giving us life, or pulling us out of the chaos of a non-existence and of our slavery, unveils truth for us; the Son is the formator who molds his sentiments in us: the Spirit is the companion, the “sweet guest of souls” who leads us toward life. ¹³ If “life in the Spirit is clearly of primary importance” ¹⁴, the relationship with God constitutes the secret breath of OF; or, prayer educates us (draws us out), as it digs and makes the truth of ourselves emerge¹⁵ in us. It forms us, since it molds and models the “sentiments of the Son” in the depth of our identity; finally, it accompanies us, because each day it makes us greater sharers in the paternity and providence of the Father, besides making us travel companions of the men our brothers. ¹⁶

I will make just a couple of quick points, still from my text Il respiro della vita (110-113).