Abstract:
Entering higher education is a rite of passage in the life of the theology student, because generally it occurs at the beginning of the adult life or in the final phase of adolescence and mobilizes the subjectivity of the student, since the academic environment is a vase of contents and experiences with the potential to alter the position of the individual in society, the person’s role, his or her self-perception and the perception of the other and of the issues of social interest themselves, and especially his or her spirituality. This fact places the student in the undergraduate course of theology as an object of special attention and has mobilized the pedagogical and pastoral action in the quest of answers to the discomfort resulting from entering an environment of scientific rationality and needing to adapt not only to the academic life in its interpersonal aspects but also to the university as a conjunction of factors of individual formation for the practice of citizenship in the participation as mediator of vocational destinies of many and social decisions in such mutating times. Therefore, to adapt configures itself as a challenge not only because of the development phase in which the newly enrolled is in but also because of the other concurring factors. The research adopts as its theoretical referential the Phenomenology of Life by Michel Henry and the work of Gennep about rites of passage. It employs the descriptive method for the analysis of the process of adaptation. As a contribution, the research proposes guiding principles for amplifying the institutional action for the Academic Ministry in the sense of favoring the transformation process of the student and preparing him or her for an action committed to “Life”.
