Vision & Mission

Today was the final day of our community meetings where we were supposed to synthesize the discussions over the last 2 days and come up with this year's vision & mission statements for the seminary.

We all agreed to keep last year's Vision which is "Fidelity to our Identity as Teacher, Minister and Leader." As that is the fundamental overlying vision that we have to live out as seminarians and priests. The how to achieve that which is the mission statement took a while to come out with, cos we all gave our key focus, and from there tried to come up with a statement that would encompass it all. The process was kinda like MSC meetings, even had some parts of clarifying the language ;) And so we finally agreed and decided with the mission being "through Integral Formation and Growth in Pastoral Charity and Apostalic Zeal."

Personally the important part wasn't so much the statement even less the wording's used. Important part was the whole process of reaching that conclusion. The discussions and input really helped me to understand a bit of what integral formation, pastoral charity and apostalic zeal really meant. And so am going to write some points which I will try to focus on in my on formation this year, and hopefully look back at it at the end, and see how i've grown in these areas.

1) Firstly, definitely would be the Growth Factor. Something close to my heart, but always so hard to notice in myself. The word used commonly was interiorization, to make what we learn a part of our lives and transform us.

2) Integral Formation - the phrase might be quite vague to those reading this. What I do know of it, is that my formation has many different components, human, intellectual, spiritual and pastoral/apostalic. Thus my formation here has to incorporate all this different components, but not only that, it has to be integrated and not compartmentalised. eg. The intellectual formation that I receive in my studies has to be integrated to the pastoral aspect of my life. Still have to find out more about the 4 components too.

3) Personalised - It was highlighted that integral formation and the word growth, pre-supposes it being personalised, but for me I guess it's a really important point. Firstly in the sense that my formation is my personal responsibility. Something that I'm glad that I'm reminded right from the start. And secondly that my formation should be tuned to who I am, thus of course it would mean self-discovery, and forming myself with my strengths and weaknesses in mind.

4) Pastoral Charity and Apostalic Zeal - In short to give myself totally to Christ, and also the passion for the apostalic mission.

5) Relevance to the current pastoral situation - The need to keep up to date, with what is happening with the people in society, and to develop myself to meet their needs.

That's all I got for now. And oh yah one thing I noticed about myself just now at evening prayer, was that I was too distracted with the chanting and singing to really concentrate on the psalms. But hopefully that will go once I get more familiar with the tunes.

Still haven't thought of a name for this blog.