ASIA - OCEANIA FORUM 2018

Vung Tau, June 26-28

Input of Vincent Leclercq

THE FORMATION IN THE ASSUMPTION AND IN ASIA

I am very happy to be here with you and I thank you for inviting me as
Secretary-General for Formation. This meeting is already bringing us a lot and I am
happy to witness everything that has transpired in this beautiful continent. I was
instructed not to lose what is sown here. Thus, I feel blest to seek together what the
Lord is trying to make us understand with the help of the Holy Spirit.

Strengths
Asia has many strengths in recruiting and forming the "missionary disciples" of
Christ that our congregation needs.

Asia is young, dynamic, and welcoming. The churches do not yet know the level
of secularization of the West. They are also rich in their diversity and complementarity.
With regard to the Assumptionists in Asia, the congregation is rich in what wey have
already brought to the Assumption particularly in three respective countries Korea,
Vietnam and the Philippines.

The Congregation’s charism is that of a fraternal life open to the world, the
"family spirit" of our communities, the love of the local and the universal Church, a
passion for education and to transmit the faith, to accompany the youth, to join the
poorest...This charism now finds its roots in Asia. It is a grace that God makes us (a
"kairos") but also a task that He entrusts to us. This mission commits our historical
responsibility here and now (in the present time, the "chronos" of our watches).

The Formation thus raises the fundamental question of this Asia-Oceania Forum: "How
can we continue to sow the charism of the Assumption, to make it grow where we are
located, with and for those who live in Asia with us or around us?"

We want to form Assumptionists at ease with their Assumptionist identity,

proud to be Assumptionists. We need Assumptionists who know how to explain and
update through their ministries the project of Father d'Alzon and for whom the horizon
of the Kingdom of God has become very concrete.

To promote the vitality of our charism, we must multiply our exchanges from the
realities experienced in Asia. We need to value our acquired skills, strengthen our
learning of modern languages (in addition to its own mother tongue: every religious is
encouraged to choose between English, French and Spanish), tighten our collaboration
to develop new formation projects(s). And as soon as possible, to consider a new joint
foundation (Indonesia for example) because our elders would not have hesitated long!

Challenges addressed to the formators in Asia

There are many stories. In fact, we are constantly thanking the formators. For his
part, our Father General, TRP Benoît GRIERE, does it so often. These challenges are best
articulated in three aspects:

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To insist on the criteria for recruitment: not only the classical criteria of age, study
capacity, physical and/or psychical health... But also other criteria such as spirit of
initiative, generosity, dynamism, frankness and selflessness... These qualities enriched
by a good academic formation help the religious to adapt to new apostolic and cultural
fields, to implement together new projects, to respond to new missions;
And also, personal qualities and a sufficient human maturity.
"Will this brother be able to live happily and to make happy the brethren with whom he
shares his life in apostolic community?" “On what qualities can he rely on when the
mission becomes more difficult for him?" “Did he choose Christ?" Indeed, it will be to
hold faithfully the commitment to the Assumption and not only to choose religious life
for a moment.

To insist on evaluations during the major stages of the formation. How do we check the
issues that have just been mentioned? How much time does it entail? To what extent?

In other words, we need to rethink the objectives of our formation in a spirit of unity
with and for the youngest because they are our future in Asia. It is a question of
developing a spirit of initiative and communion. To avoid self-centeredness or
sometimes "solo” race. To foster collaboration and not competition or comparison
between brothers, between communities or nations. We need to aim at personal
conversion and not at formalism and repetition of the past.

Today, internationality is no longer an option in the Congregation - yes I want it; no I

don't want it – because the congregation needs it to continue its mission. We must
invent the way to experience together our diversity and what we have in common.

Our personal and community evaluations must promote fraternity among the brothers
of different nationalities, highlight it or revive it... At the end of his formation, each
brother will be able to say: "At Assumption, I learned that I needed others (my brothers)
and the Totally Other (the Lord) to become the one who I wanted to become with all my
heart and before God."

To insist on the quality of our "Assumptionist" accompaniment of formation. This

accompaniment aims to make sense of what we are living. But to give meaning that the
Assumptionist’s life is above all to root it in an Assumptionist spirit namely:

- The spirituality of the congregation (Father d'Alzon but also those who have
appropriated his legacy for 150 years and who have made it fruitful)
- The Fathers of the Church: Saint Augustine, of course.
- The Mission: "Formation is for mission"

The three countries Vietnam, the Philippines and Korea face the challenge of inventing
their future and missionary momentum together. It is now a question of developing an
intra-and extra-Asian internationality while retaining local specificities and cultural
identities.

That each country can develop its strengths, its specificities and its apostolates. That any
Assumptionist can clearly identify what he is looking for and can find it in our
respective communities in Vietnam, Korea and the Philippines.

Soon enough, religious who grew up in Asia will be called with other brothers to take
leadership and lead the development of the congregation. The future Vicariate must
prepare itself for it right now. Its focus is to raise the leaders of tomorrow.

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3. The needs for an integral formation in Assumption and in Asia.

The challenges we face are directed towards the need for integral formation: human,
spiritual, intellectual and apostolic. We must look together to give ourselves the means
to verify that balance, in our curriculum or in the schedules of our communities but also
throughout the formation. Each brother must be able to find in the formation he
receives clear marks to record progress and overcome the difficulties that he
encounters.

For this, there is a need for regular meetings not only between the formators, but also
between the brothers in formation themselves, between the formators and the brothers
in formation. It is not a matter of adding meetings to meetings but rather of inventing
new ways of animating our community meetings.

There is a need to accompany specifically the perpetual professed and the young priests
who are sometimes neglected in the formation plan and for this to form more future
formators.

Despite the remarkable efforts that have been made, there are still too few formators in
the congregation who have a sufficiently accurate view of the contexts of life in Asia,
while the proportion of Asian religious increases significantly.

The very first formators (the founders) enjoyed a sufficient international experience.
Their stays abroad (Europe and the United States) allowed the foundations, the
reciprocal trust and facilitated the mobility requested of one or the other religious. This
way of discovering the Assumption in its diversity must be extended to the young
Assumptionists of the future Vicariate. We now need to think of other forms of
exchange between communities, regions or provinces.

There is finally a need for theologians in the Assumption.

Assumptionist theologians are required to translate and interpret the charism of the
Assumption in practice in the respect of the anthropological, ecclesial and cultural
realities of Asia. The Assumptionists will thus be able to contribute to the evolutions
and conversions of a "Christianity" both "enriched" and "proven" in contact with
interreligious dialogue. We especially need "good theologians" to translate the lived
reality, to update the "Christology" of Father d'Alzon, the richness of his missionary
perspective, his ecclesial position. We have a whole legacy to rediscover. The
foundations of our charism are both universal but also deeply rooted in the nineteenth
century of France that we must surpass in order to appropriate more authentically the
thought and action of Fr. Emmanuel d'Alzon.

The future of the Assumption is before us. What awaits us in Asia will help us to be a
united congregational body. The condition is to build on a spirit of communion and a
solid theological formation in order to look at our realities with faith, hope and charity.

CONCLUSION: In the Letter (243, 4) addressed to a certain Lætus, who had left the
world but was tempted to return because he was bored with his parents, Saint
Augustine wrote this in reference to Acts 4, 32: "Your soul is not yours alone, but it belongs
to all your brethren, as, in their turn, their souls are yours; or rather, their souls and yours are
not souls in the plural, but they are one soul, the unique soul of Christ (Letter 243, 6).

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Why this insistence of Saint Augustine on the community? For him, the reason for our
communion is not at first practical (solidarity, sharing of goods, pastoral efficiency...) It
is mostly spiritual. No one can belong to the head, which is Christ, if he does not belong
also to his body, the Church... and for us Assumptionists, the local and apostolic
community.

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