“Spiritual transformation, from a Christian perspective, challenges the individual to live for the one true God rather than mere idols. The goal of Christian transformation is a commitment to unconditionally finding God’s will revealed in the person of Jesus, and his vision of the kingdom of God. Strategies for ongoing religious transformation include a regu­lar prayer life, fasting, spiritual reading, and almsgiving”. (Len Sperry).

Spiritual dimension of formation aims at spiritual transformation of the formee. Lonergan uses the term “religious conversion”  to mean the condition of  being grasped by “ultimate concern”  not an act but a “ dynamic state that is prior to and principle of subsequent acts.”[1] It happens when the Holy Spirit floods of the human heart with love which causes an “other-worldly falling in love”. In most cases religious conversion precedes intellectual and moral conversions. When the experience of God’s love fundamentally defines the identity of the person, he becomes a new creation and opens up to the newness of the Kingdom and a changed style of life.

For a Claretian formee his spiritual formation enables him to appropriate the “new name” personally and to create a community of brothers. “Because we are sons we are also brothers” (MFL ).

Spiritual transformation is effected when the formee cooperates with the Holy Spirit. On the part of the formee it requires spiritual practices, cultivation of virtues and enabling self-capacities. Virtues are  dispositions that develop a particular dimension while self capacities are abilities and skills that function as a requisite for a healthy development of self. Spiritual practices are activities that transform our habitual states of mind and awaken a new spiritual consciousness. The following are suggested by Len Sperry for spiritual transformation[2]:

Virtues: Charity and holiness

Charity is a freely given gift of God which unites us to God and enables us to curb our self-centered­ness and reach out to others.

Holiness enables one to mediate the presence of God in one’s environment.

Self capacities: Autonomy and self surrender

Autonomy is the capacity to regulate self-esteem and to be alone with minimal fear of abandonment or engulfment.

Self surrender is capacity to forego self-interests that are ob­stacles to being caring and compassionate.

Spiritual practices: Awakening spiritual vision. Spiritual practices for awakening spiritual vision are: centering prayer; meditation; mantra; community worship; mindfulness in eat­ing, walking, listening, and speech

A Story of spiritual awakening (St. Augustine[3])

Late have I loved you, Beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you!
Lo, you were within,
 but I outside, seeking there for you,
 and upon the shapely things you have made
 I rushed headlong – I, misshapen.
You were with me, but I was not with you.
They held me back far from you,
 those things which would have no being,
 were they not in you.

You called, shouted, broke through my deafness;
 you flared, blazed, banished my blindness;
 you lavished your fragrance, I gasped; and now I pant for you;
 I tasted you, and now I hunger and thirst;
 you touched me, and I burned for your peace.

When at last I cling to you with my whole being there will be no more anguish or labor for me, and my life wil l be alive indeed, alive because filled with you…

[1] Lonergan Bernard, Method in Theology, 2^nd ed., University of Toronto Press, 1990, pp. p.240.

[2] Len Sperry, Transforming Self and community, chapter 6, The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota, 2002,

[3] Confessions (Lib. 10, 26. 37-29, 40: CSEL 33, 255-256).