The Divine Word Missionaries Australia Province has extended its commitment to being present in New Zealand and is ready to respond to any requests by bishops to provide more confreres as needed.

Provincial, Fr Asaeli Rass SVD, undertook a Provincial Visitation to New Zealand earlier this month, and said he was “very impressed” by the ministry of the four confreres who are currently assigned there.

The halls of Dorish Maru College, the SVD’s formation house in Melbourne, are once again ringing with life following the arrival of five new missionary students – the first big intake since international borders re-opened after the pandemic.

The students are from Vietnam and China. Also arriving recently are two SVD priests, who are studying English before beginning their ministry.

After two years of pandemic lockdowns and restrictions in Melbourne, the SVD students finally got the opportunity to hit the road and travel out of Victoria as a formation community during the recent winter academic holidays.

The students from Dorish Maru College visited SVD parishes and confreres as well as the Holy Spirit Sisters, shared their vocational stories and spent time with families in Queensland and New South Wales, while also having the chance to explore some of what the different parts of Australia have to offer.

This past weekend, the Catholic Church in Australia marked Social Justice Sunday, and this year, the bishops chose to focus on the pressing issue of domestic and family violence.

We only to have to watch the news to know what a big problem this is in our community. And sadly, too many Australians, mostly women and children, have first-hand knowledge of the trauma of violence.

In 2018, I attended the episcopal ordination of Bishop Ewald Sedu, in Maumere. Maumere is a very Catholic town, on the very Catholic island of Flores, in very Christian eastern Indonesia.

How many of us, especially the younger generation, have thousands of Facebook friends but have never met them in person? I am sure one of them.

The first reading from the Prophet Jeremiah speaks of how Jeremiah was ill treated for doing God’s work. He is thrown in the well since he is accused of dampening the spirit of the soldiers and the people by speaking the truth.

The Gospel reading for this Sunday invites us to be ready and dressed for action. We remember the Gospel from last Sunday, where the rich man, seeing the bumper harvest he had, thinks of building bigger barns and store all the wealth to himself and doesn’t even give a second thought of sharing it with the other.

To borrow a story from a good friend of mine, Fr Bel San Luis, SVD, there was a man who wanted to have a lot of money so badly that he promised the devil to do his work in exchange for a copy of the newspaper a day ahead before it was published so that he could get the winning Lotto number in advance.

I have to admit that for quite some time I have not read many SVD publications. I feel I don’t find anything new. The familiar messages of multi/intercultural, international, dialogue(s), mission, ‘world is our parish’, ‘unity in diversity’… all sound too familiar from the novitiate days and almost slogan-like. It’s the same message, just under different packaging. Social justice and climate change! Oh yeah, great! Who would not stand up for such lofty ideas in this age of the globalisation, unless one is a bigot.

Like doubting Thomas, instead of taking ideas for granted, we must keep asking questions and re-examine what is passed on to us. Renew and revive!