Suffering and tragedy are things that we don’t want to reflect on or think too much about because of the pain that it brings into our lives.

One heart, many faces we have been called to serve Christ and one another.  What a blessing to have the honour of celebrating the 150th Jubilee Year of our SVD existence!  We definitely have a lot to celebrate looking back at the past 150 years of grace, struggles and growth, writes Fr Roger Kyaw SVD. 

As I just embarked on my first mission a few months ago, I don’t feel like I have a lot of ministerial experiences yet to share. Rather I want to reflect on my encounter with the light in the SVD in the past 10 years.

Today we are invited to reflect upon the Transfiguration of Jesus. Jesus takes Peter, James and John up the mountain to pray and when he was at prayer he was transfigured.

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus was led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness, to spend forty days and nights in prayer and fasting. The Holy Spirit not only led Jesus into temptation but also gave Him the sustaining power to overcome the temptations.

People often think the coldest places on planet earth are the north and south poles. Analogically, the heart of person could be the coldest place, for it is deep in the heart of a person, evil seeds are harboured and germinated, from which words and actions are the fruits.

My name is Daniel Polla, and I am originally from Indonesia. The Australia Province is my second mission assignment as a Divine Word Missionary. On 10 December 2023, Bishop Charles Gauci of Darwin Diocese placed me as the parish priest and Yanuarius Salu as the co-pastor of Daly River Parish - my first mission assignment in the Australia Province.

St Francis Xavier Parish in Daly River has five communities located at varying distances from the central parish. Some communities even take over two hours driving on rough roads to reach them.

The Te Awakairangi Parish in the Lower Hutt region of New Zealand’s Wellington Archdiocese is a large, culturally rich and diverse parish where the people are warm and welcoming and committed to a missionary outlook which is deeply grounded in the primacy of evangelisation.

Established in 2015, the parish is comprised of four churches and has been in the pastoral care of the Divine Word Missionaries since January 2024.

SVD students at Dorish Maru College in Melbourne, together with other new arrivals in the Province have expanded their understanding of life in Australia during a month-long Summer Acculturation Program.

The Program was held at beach-side St Leonards, near Geelong in Victoria, and aimed to give the participants, who come from a range of cultural backgrounds, a firm grounding in living and working in the multicultural society of Australia.

The second Jubilee Online Lecture hosted by the SVD Australia Province this month highlighted the need for authentic Christian witness and a commitment to go out to the peripheries of both Church and society in living out Christ’s mission.

The keynote presenter at the webinar was Fr Stanislaus Lazar SVD, with Fr Albano Da Costa SVD responding on the theme of ‘Witnessing to the Light: From Everywhere for Everyone – a Mission Perspective’.

The SVD Australia Province celebrated Word of God Sunday recently in a variety of different ways, honouring St Arnold Janssen’s devotion to the Word, as expressed in the naming of his missionary order The Society of the Divine Word.

Biblical Apostolate coordinator for the Province, Fr Elmer Ibarra SVD, said the Sunday of the Word of God was celebrated in Australia on February 9, the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time.