The Focus on Personal Formation in Jesus Youth (BJEP022)

 The Pathways of Personal Formation in Jesus Youth

I must have heard Fr. Marcelino tell this parable a dozen times, and each time it landed differently. He would describe two kinds of trees. The first was a Christmas tree — bright, decorated, loaded with gift packages. The packages arrived overnight, beautifully wrapped, instantly attractive. The second was a fruit tree — no packages, no ribbons, but the slow, patient work of roots reaching deep and branches drawing sun, until in time it bore fruit that would last. Both trees, he would say, had something real to offer. But only one had life in it.

He was talking about gifts and fruits — about the difference between the Spirit's gifts poured out in a moment of faith and the fruits that grow only in a person who abides. "Those who abide in me," Jesus said, "bear fruit that will last" (Jn 15:5). Fr. Marcelino understood something that took me longer to understand: that a person who receives gifts and is marvelously engaged in works of evangelization is not necessarily a person of personal maturity. Both are needed. And holding both together — that, in a word, is what Jesus Youth formation has always been trying to do.

Let me take you through the story of how that effort grew.

The Beginning: Introductory Retreats and the Question of Inner Wounds

From 1976 onward, introductory retreats began to multiply across Kerala, each centered on the Baptism in the Holy Spirit. The main emphases were straightforward and urgent: an awareness of God's love, the Lordship of Jesus, repentance, and openness to the Spirit. These were borrowed and adapted from the Life in the Spirit Seminar developed by the American Charismatic Renewal, and in our context, they produced remarkable fruit.

But after some years, a conviction began to take hold among renewal leaders in our region. Repentance alone, as preparation for the Baptism in the Spirit, was not enough. What about the wounds that a person carried — wounds in relationships, wounds from the past — wounds that could quietly become obstacles to receiving what God wanted to pour out? This question, aided by insights from psychology that were entering the Church's pastoral toolkit at the time, led to the incorporation of inner healing into the introductory retreat syllabus toward the end of the 1970s. It was a small adjustment. Its effects were not small.

The next step was growth retreats. Just as the introductory retreats had adapted the Life in the Spirit Seminar, the growth retreats drew on a next-stage program called "Christian Maturity." A major milestone in this history came in September 1978 at St. Albert's School, Ernakulam: a large dual training program, conducted simultaneously in English and Malayalam. Fr. Marcelino led one group; Fr. Pallivathukkal led the adjacent group. Young people from all parts of Kerala participated. I remember the sense that something unusually serious was being attempted — and it succeeded. A large, mature cohort of young leaders emerged from that program, and the movement felt it.

1982: Knowing That You Are Loved

The year 1982 deserves special mention. Fr. Gino Hendricks, who was by then the national chairman of the Renewal, carried a particular conviction that he articulated with a clarity I have never forgotten. Knowing that God is love, he would say, is the first step in the life of faith. But there is a second step, the principal one: I must come to recognize the lovability that God has deposited within me. This is not self-flattery. This is theological anthropology lived from the inside.

In January that year, around a hundred leaders took part in an English-language formation program shaped around this conviction. A Malayalam camp in July reached a larger group. And from the 'First Line' community that took shape through this process came something that still moves me when I think of it: a leadership formation program conducted across various centers under the simple, direct title "Know Yourself."

Four days. Discussions and games woven together. Topics that covered Christian growth, self-awareness, leadership development, and stable character. Conducted with warmth — deliberately, joyfully warm. I know people whose entire understanding of who they were as believers was reshaped by those four days. It helped shape, within the movement, a leadership with a clearly defined character.

During this same period, the national committee of the Renewal was organizing week-long formation programs each May in Bangalore — growth retreats, Bible study camps, leadership training, intercessory prayer retreats. Nearly all of Kerala's leadership participated, year after year. The First Line Group went on to design a year-long program called Second Line Formation — identifying participants from all zones, building a team, and conducting sustained formation at the central level. This became the forerunner of so much that followed.

A Cluster of New Programs

From around 1985 to 1987, as the movement's identity grew clearer and its ministries multiplied, something important was recognized: apostolic work requires apostolic people. An evangelizing mission must be carried out by individuals equipped with conviction and maturity. This awareness released a great energy for formation-making.

Leadership councils would set formative goals. Teams would form, discuss extensively, clarify syllabi and methodologies, and then design programs with care and prayer. These were not rushed productions. They were prepared with the knowledge that the people who designed and ran them would themselves be formed by the work of doing so.

If I tried to list every formation program Jesus Youth has created over the decades, this article would need to be a book. But I can at least name some: Sharing Groups as ongoing zone-level formations; JET and SET — Junior and Senior Evangelization Training; a yearlong Full-Timer Formation; Step One for ninth graders; History Makers for those past tenth grade; DTP; and after degree, Master Builders. Each ministry added its own layer: Kids, Teens, Campus, Professionals, Nurses, Couples, Intercession, Talents — a long array of distinct formation efforts, each shaped for a specific season of life and a specific calling.

The year 1993 stands out in my memory for what KYCT attempted under the banner "Talent 93": forty-six different weekend formation programs, conducted across the state. When I look back at that undertaking today, it fills me with a kind of joyful wonder. Forty-six. I am not sure we fully appreciated at the time what we had pulled off.

Until Christ Is Formed in Them

The most recent chapter in this story has its own date: October 11, 2012. That was the day Pope Benedict XVI inaugurated the Church's Year of Faith. And on that very same day, in Rome, the Jesus Youth movement published a new faith formation framework — a booklet titled "Until Christ Is Formed in Them," which laid out the movement's comprehensive formation vision unfolding through five stages.

This was not produced quickly. It emerged from deep spiritual seeking — from the kind of extended prayer, discernment, argument, and revision that good documents require. Its vision: that every individual who continues with the movement should receive formation in their faith life; that formation leaders should be properly prepared; and that the movement should be ready to meet the fresh challenges of an age that keeps changing faster than any of us can fully keep up with.

Jesus Youth has now spread to more than thirty countries. The challenge of introducing Jesus and the Church in the "language" understood here and now — in cultures and societies that the founders of the movement in 1976 Kerala could not have imagined — remains as alive as ever. Formation is not a solved problem. It is a living question that each generation of leadership must answer afresh, with the same mixture of deep spiritual fullness and discernment that has kept this movement relevant wherever it has taken root.

Fr. Marcelino's parable about the fruit tree was right. Fruit takes time. But there is no greater joy than fruit that lasts.

For further reflection:

1. Fr. Marcelino drew a distinction between the gifts and the fruits of the Spirit — between what arrives quickly and what grows slowly. How are both of these present in your own life of faith, and do you give equal attention to each?

2. Fr. Gino's formation program was built on the conviction that recognizing your own lovability before God is the principal step in faith growth. Do you believe that about yourself? What has shaped — or hindered — that belief?

3. The movement invested enormous energy in designing, running, and updating formation programs across every stage of life. What has been the most significant formation experience in your own journey, and what made it transformative?

4. "Until Christ is formed in them" (Gal 4:19) was the vision Paul expressed for the communities he was forming. What would it mean, concretely, for Christ to be more fully formed in you this year?