Our formation never ends

THAT´S right. Our formation never ends. It´s a till-death affair. No matter how accomplished we are, how acknowledged we are by the public of our attainment, we need to realize deeply that we have to continue forming ourselves like we need oxygen.

This is the law of our life. For as long as we still breathe, challenges to face, goals to reach will never be lacking. And that´s mainly because more than our physical, human and natural needs, we have spiritual needs, let alone, our supernatural goal, that will never be fully satisfied and adequately reached here in life. And they continue to demand things from us.

Life is a constant journeying or pilgrimage. And in every aspect of our life, especially in our spiritual and moral side, the effort and even the battle for improvement never stops. In his second letter, St. Peter gives us an idea of the reason behind.

¨Do you accordingly on your part strive diligently,¨ he says, ¨to supply your faith with virtue, your virtue with knowledge, your knowledge with self-control, your self-control with patience, your patience with piety, your piety with fraternal love, your fraternal love with charity.¨ (1,5-7)

As we can see, any virtue or good thing that we may have reached always asks to be raised to a higher level, let alone, leads us to other virtues that we still lack until we reach the highest of the virtues, charity itself, whose requirements never get exhausted here in this life.

We need to vigorously fight against our tendency to be complacent and self-satisfied with what we already have learned. That tendency would gravely compromise our life and our ultimate goal itself. We have to feel the hunger for more formation. If we don´t feel that, we would have a clear problem. We should therefore react accordingly.

That´s why we need to deepen our humility, because that virtue always brings us face to face with this objective need of ours for continuing formation. It´s what will make us feel the urge to ask for more formation.

To grow in humility, we need to pray, beg our Lord for more light so we can see more things. And then we just look around us to realize how infinite indeed are the things that we still need to learn and master.

We should never say, Enough! Saying so would not only mean we have stopped forming. Rather, as St. Augustine once said, we would start to retrogress, since in our life, it´s either we move forward or we move backward. The state of immobility is actually an illusion.

This humility has to be oiled by the real charity that can only come from God as exemplified by Christ himself. He once said, ¨For them do I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.¨ (Jn 17,19)

Imagine Christ, God and man, having to continue sanctifying himself in order to sanctify us! In another part of the gospel, we are told that Christ—as a child but always God the Son—went through the process of growing not only in age, but also ¨in wisdom...and grace before God and men.¨ (Lk 2,52) This fact can only speak of humility imbued with love.

But then again, human as we are, we tend to ignore this fact. And that´s why we really need to sit down, if not kneel, then think, reflect and pray, then beg like a beggar, because our tendency to be complacent, lazy and self-satisfied is not only overwhelming but it also works in very subtle and treacherous ways. Before we know it, we are already gripped by it.

I would say that this effort to provoke the urge for continuing formation cannot be other than an integral part of our own sanctification. It just cannot be a matter of human wilfullness, driven bypurely human motives. It has to be another aspect of our sanctification that makes us do things generously, out of sheer love in spite of difficulties, and to a heroic degree.

Otherwise, we would put to reality this warning of St. Paul: ¨If anyone...does not agree with the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that doctrine which is according to godliness, he is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about controversies and disputes of words.

¨From these arise envies, quarrels, blasphemies, base suspicions, the wranglings of men corrupt in mind and bereft of truth.¨ (1 Tim 6,3-6)

How ugly that would be! What foul air we would be producing! It´s important that we pursue our endless formation properly.