What is Human Formation and Why Do We Need It?
Gone is the family
In the past, we would learn how to be spouses and parents from our own families. We would learn the right way of being a functioning human by being raised by a family that could adequately model and instruct us in how we should think and interact with others.
But gone are those days. Most of us are entering into marriage after living through years of being raised by unhappy or divorced parents. Even if we were some of the few who were raised by happily married parents, the odds that they possessed the language and ability to completely form us as humans is slim.
In order for us to step into our vocation and be fertile soil for God to work with, we need to be humanly formed. As St. John Paul writes, “Human formation, when it is carried out in the context of an anthropology which is open to the full truth regarding the human person, leads to and finds its completion in spiritual formation.” We can’t assume engaged or married couples only need spiritual formation to fix their marital and parental struggles.
Spiritual formation builds on human formation. And we’ve been only built up spiritually, without beginning with the human, we’ve been building on sinking sand.
Why human formation?
Our personal formation as followers of Christ “would be deprived of its necessary foundation if it lacked a suitable human formation.” Many of us struggle with spiritual growth because of a non-existent foundation of human formation. For example, we might be struggling to develop a daily, habitual prayer life and become consumed by focusing on our lack of prayer rather than focus on developing the tools necessary to build any type of habit.
Without the proper human formation, without the tools and foundation that comes with human formation, we will struggle to develop any good habits, let alone sustainable spiritual habits.
Human formation is the foundation of all we do as humans. Human formation forms how we function within ourselves and extends to how we function and interact with the people around us. Do we know how we should act with others in the plethora of situations that come about day to day? It is impossible to be Christ to others if we don’t fully understand how to be a normal person. We won’t reach anyone, especially not our children or spouse, with the Gospel if we don’t know how to manage the interpersonal dynamics of relationships effectively.
As St. John Paul tells us in order that our “ministry may be humanly as credible and acceptable as possible, it is important that [we] should mold [our] human personality in such a way that it becomes a bridge and not an obstacle for others in their meeting with Jesus Christ the Redeemer of humanity.”
What about grace?
Grace perfects nature. But if our nature, our humanness, hasn’t fully developed because of our lack of formation, it will take longer for God to bring about our perfection because grace requires our cooperation. How can we cooperate with God in areas of our life that we don’t realize need to be healed or perfected? For many of us, we’ve fallen into the lie of “that’s the way I am”. I have a short temper, I am forgetful, I am not made for marriage, I could never handle that many kids.
Our vocation, religious, marriage, or single life, will only bring about sanctification to the degree we can cooperate with God in the areas that need to be sanctified.
In marriage, this requires a building of a foundation that was never set by our parents. But in order for us to be grown in our vocation of marriage, and for us to thrive as spouses and parents, we need to build a human foundation that grace can perfect.
To build a foundation we must “be educated to love the truth, to be loyal, to respect every person, to have a sense of justice, to be true to [our] word, to be genuinely compassionate, to be [people] of integrity and, especially, to be balanced in judgment and behavior.”
This is why we need human formation.
Foundations of family life
A spouse and a parent ought to be someone who “should be able to know the depths of the human heart, to perceive difficulties and problems, to make meeting and dialogue easy, to create trust and cooperation, to express serene and objective judgments.” If this isn’t us at the foundation of our vocation as spouse and parent, we are going to struggle to build authentic relationships with those whom have been entrusted to our care. Knowing how to meet needs, give and receive love, and properly forgive stem from knowing what the essential needs of humans are, how humans give and receive love, and why forgiveness is so essential. Knowing the essential need of love and belonging at the core of all humans will help us better understand why our toddler won’t stop talking to us about random events of the day, or why our spouse seems to get offended by a seemingly passing comment.
Understanding how to lead people will help us in how we manage our home. Understanding why people think, act, and believe the way they do will help us communicate to our spouses and children to meet them where they are at. Human formation lays at the foundation of anything and everything we try to do as spouses and parents.
Grace builds upon this.
For more on human formation, listen to our latest episode of Pre-Cana with the Pope:
How To Be a Person: Why Human Formation is the Necessary Foundation of Marriage
Verso L’alto - Renzo