Fr Prakash Menezes SVD says his return to Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Parish in Alice Springs feels like “coming home”, as it was the first parish he was assigned to as a Divine Word Missionary more than five years ago.

Back then, Fr Prakash was in Alice Springs as assistant priest, but last month, he returned to be installed as Parish Priest.

A recent pilgrimage ‘In the Footsteps of Mary MacKillop’ was a profound experience for Fr Nick de Groot SVD, helping him to reflect not only on God’s constant presence throughout his missionary life, but also on the leap of faith taken by his migrant parents when they moved to Australia.

Fr Nick joined 20 other pilgrims from October 22 to November 2 on a journey that took them from Melbourne, where Mary, Australia’s first saint, was born, to Hamilton, Portland, Penola, Robe and Adelaide before flying on to Sydney for the final three days of visiting, reflection and prayer.

Pope Francis’ visit to Thailand was a great opportunity for the Church in Thailand to invigorate its faith and to fire up the missionary dimension as the people celebrate the 350th anniversary of the Siam Mission, an SVD priest assigned to the country says.

Fr Truong Thong Le SVD was one of 11 Divine Word Missionaries from the AUS Province currently working in Thailand or Myanmar who took part in the events surrounding the Papal visit. They were also joined by an SVD priest from the Vietnam Province.

In asking the Church to celebrate an Extraordinary Mission Month this October, Pope Francis is calling each one of us to live out our baptismal calling to carry forward the mission of Jesus Christ, says Fr Truc Quoc Phan SVD.

Fr Truc is the Mission Secretary for the Divine Word Missionaries’ AUS Province, a job which entails both living and promoting Christ’s mission locally and internationally.

Today’s Gospel sheds light on the theme of our relationship with God and introduces a double conviction: first, that neutrality is impossible, and second, that there are no definitive states in the life of a disciple, except fidelity to God.

The books of Ezra and Nehemiah describes, in an epic of faith, important moments of the restoration of the community of the People of God in the ancient land of the fathers after the Babylonian exile.

As you receive this edition of In the Word in your inbox, we are preparing, with the rest of the Church, to respond to Pope Francis’ invitation to celebrate an Extraordinary Mission Month throughout October.

This coincides with the annual celebration of World Mission Sunday on October 20, but Pope Francis has called us to an even more active awareness and promotion of mission this year to commemorate the centenary of Pope Benedict XV’s Apostolic Letter Maximum Ilud, published in November 1919.

While at Sydney University in the late sixties, I belonged to the Catholic Bushwalking Club. Groups of us would go for day walks and weekend camping in the Blue Mountains, this being a well-known mountain range west of Sydney. There were a number of Columban Missionary priests who were also present on these different walks and camping weekends.

When I finished my studies in Geology, I applied and was accepted to work for a mining company in Queensland. However at the same time that career seemed less and less appealing. One time when I was on a Bushwalking camping trip I experienced a calling to follow Jesus as a priest.

After nearly a decade holding the purse-strings of the SVD across the world, Fr Stephan Gerdes SVD has arrived in the AUS Province, ready for God to reveal his new mission assignment.

Fr Stephan, who was born and raised in Germany, has been Treasurer-General of the Society of the Divine Word, based in Rome since 2010 and before that was a missionary to Papua New Guinea.

It’s a long way from Fr Prakash Menezes SVD’s home in India to his parish of Santa Teresa in the Central Australian desert country, but it is exactly the kind of Christ-led and people-centred life he hoped for when he signed up to be a missionary priest.

Fr Prakash joined the Divine Word Missionaries in India and undertook his theological studies and formation in Melbourne, where he made his final vows and was ordained to the priesthood in 2014.