Program Components

Essential Components of the Program

From July 15 to March 15, the ARFIans undergo a program divided into three segments:

1. Personal Integration
2. Thirty-day Retreat
3. Retooling and Program Writing

From July to October, they undergo a series of psycho-spiritual sessions that allows them to reflect on their lives, their development as persons and as religious. It is a fact that one is a product of one’s historical past, an understanding of which can shed light on one’s attitudes and behaviors that facilitate or block one’s personal integration. Wholeness is holiness, both in the human and divine sense. It goes without saying that personal accompaniment of the participants is done to ensure that the process of integration and transformation is directed.

Sessions include personality integration, psychodynamics, human sexuality and celibacy, core energy, enneagram, life transitions, value development, spirituality, to mention a few. Skills building sessions are also offered – program planning, community building, journal writing, leadership, appreciative inquiry and many other skills that a formator will need for him/her to carry out his/her responsibilities efficiently and effectively. The processing sessions help prepare the participants clear their heart, mind and spirit of blocks so they can enter into the Thirty-Day Retreat and dispose themselves to the workings of the Spirit. The Thirty Day Retreat is held October-November, at the Sacred Heart Novitiate of the Society of Jesus, situated in Novaliches, Quezon City. Spiritual Directors, both male and female, honed in the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises guide the ARFIans through the long retreat.













The third part of the ARFI program tools and retools the ARFIans with the necessary content and skills they will need as formators – leadership, discernment, accompaniment, journal writing, cross cultural integration, appreciative inquiry, and program writing. January and February are months devoted to program writing. The ARFIans are taught how to put together a formation program of their choice that they can bring home to adapt and implement once they return to their country of origin. This is one of the unique features of the ARFI program.