Ongoing Formation: A Pilgrimage to the Heart
Religious life is not sustained only by beginnings, nor is it renewed solely with new projects. It also needs to stop, review the path traveled, and return to the heart. This is key to understanding the ongoing formation experience lived by Augustinian Recollect religious between 40 and 55 years of age in Mexico: not as an accumulation of content, but as a process of interior, fraternal, and spiritual pilgrimage.
Saint Augustine understood his own life as a journey. His story is that of a seeker who, through stages, crises, and learning, discovers that the truth is not found outside, but in the depths of the heart inhabited by God. This intuition also runs through ongoing formation: we are pilgrims in the Church, called again and again to return to the essential.
Returning to the Heart in Midlife
Midlife ministry is a particularly significant time. Experiences, responsibilities, weariness, and also fruits have accumulated. At this moment, ongoing formation becomes a space of grace to integrate one’s own history, reconcile with limitations, and reread the path in the light of the initial call.
Ā«Do not go outside yourself; return to yourself. Truth dwells in the inner man,Ā» recalls Saint Augustine. Returning to the heart is not isolating oneself, but unifying life, allowing God to reoccupy the center, and rediscovering the profound meaning of vocation in the midst of daily challenges.
Pilgrimage Together: Community and Fraternity
Every authentic pilgrimage is lived in company. The formative experience in Mexico highlighted that the Augustinian Recollect vocation is, above all, a relational vocation. Cultural, geographical, and pastoral differences do not separate; on the contrary, they enrich when lived from communion.
The community thus becomes a place of listening, shared discernment, and mutual support. In a world that pushes towards isolation, fraternal life reminds us that spiritual maturity is not reached in solitude, but by walking together, carrying one another, and learning to love and let ourselves be loved.
Formation that Opens to Mission and Hope
This pilgrimage to the heart does not close in on itself. Ongoing formation is oriented to serve better, to exercise ministry from one’s own gifts, and to renew missionary availability. Visits to social realities, encounters with contemplative communities, and moments of retreat helped to integrate prayer, mission, and commitment to the most vulnerable.
The formative journey culminated in silence and prayer, as a sign that all authentic renewal is born from the encounter with God. In a time marked by haste and dispersion, ongoing formation reminds us that only those who return to the source can continue to offer living water.
A Time of Grace to Continue Walking
The ongoing formation experienced in Mexico can be read, thus, as a time of grace in the midst of ordinary life. An invitation not to let routine extinguish desire, to care for interiority, and to continue walking with hope towards the City of God.
We ask that, through the intercession of the Virgin of Guadalupe, this path may continue to bear fruit in the lives of those who have participated and, through them, in the entire Augustinian Recollect family.
