Divine Word Missionaries who attended the recent Oceania Bishops’ Assembly in Fiji have described it as a hopeful, joyful experience of collegiality and synodality, where bishops listened to the cry of the earth and oceans along with the hopes and desires of Catholics across the region for the future of the Church.

Six SVD members attended the meeting – five bishops from Australia and Papua New Guinea and one priest, the AUS Province Provincial, Fr Asaeli Rass SVD, who helped facilitate the gathering.

Fr Bill Burt SVD marked his Golden Jubilee of priestly ordination recently with a “simple celebration” with confreres and friends at Melbourne’s Dorish Maru College.

It was fitting that Fr Bill’s celebration took place in an SVD formation house, given that he has worked in the formation area on several occasions over those 50 years of priesthood and missionary life.

As we all embark on the season of Lent, we Divine Word Missionaries of the Australia Province are also about to undertake our Provincial Chapter.

The theme of the Chapter is ‘“Your Light Must Shine Before Others” (Mt.5: 16): Faithful and Creative Disciples in a Wounded World’ and it is a theme which gives us much to reflect on.

Today is the First Sunday of Lent, and  today’s Gospel is taken from the opening of  Matthew, chapter 4.  We hear the well known, dramatic story of Jesus’ temptations in the desert which takes place before he begins his public ministry.

During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln was asked, “How can we get rid of our enemies?” He then asked his generals about their war strategies so that they could win battles. Then Abraham Lincoln said, “We can get rid of our enemies by making them our friends”.

Jesus, through the Gospel this 6^th Sunday of ordinary time, reminds us to live out our Christian life in the light of the moral values inspired and grounded on love, because God is love.

Sometimes I ponder what sin I regularly commit? We commit sins “in my thought, in my word and in what I have done” as we often confess and ask for God’s forgiveness before Mass.

The friends and partners in mission of the SVD Australia Province raised more than $70,000 in recent months for two special mission appeals – one to assist the people affected by the war in Ukraine and the other, to purchase a campervan for ministry to remote communities in Central Australia.

“We are very grateful for the generosity of people who donated to these special appeals,” says Mission Secretary Fr Viet Nguyen SVD.

Two Divine Word Missionaries priests from the Australia Province have been appointed to diocesan ecumenical or interfaith bodies, to help promote dialogue and understanding among faith communities.

Fr Michael Hardie SVD has been appointed to the Parramatta Diocese Interfaith Commission while Fr Mikhael Loke SVD has been appointed to the reference group for the Brisbane Archdiocese Council for Ecumenism and Inter-religious Relations.

Divine Word Missionaries across the Australia Province celebrated the feast days of two SVD saints – St Arnold Janssen and St Joseph Freinademetz this month – and for the first time, the SVD founder’s feast was celebrated in the Tiwi Islands.

The SVD, founded by St Arnold in Steyl, Holland in 1875, took up ministry at Our Lady of Peace and St Theresa’s Parish on Bathurst Island last August, following decades of pastoral ministry there by the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart.