Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Parish in Alice Springs has been finding new common ground through regular sharing of the Eucharist among members of the Arrernte indigenous community and the broader parish.

Historically, the Arrernte Catholic community, or Ngkarte Mikwekenhe community, has celebrated Mass at South Terrace Community Centre, across town from the main parish church. But since Holy Week last year, the two communities have been sharing the Eucharist together once a month.

As this edition of In the Word reaches you, we are about to embark on the Easter Triduum, those blessed days of entering into the passion, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

It’s a busy time for many of us, with all the liturgies to attend and be part of. But on the flip-side, it is also, for Christians, a time of profound un-busyness, of deep quiet, of fasting, prayer and reflection.

The SVD AUS Province has begun the work of reviewing and formulating the Province’s policies and protocols in the area of Professional Standards, with the aim of producing a best-practice manual which will contribute to a safer Church and safer society.

The move forms part of the Province’s initial response to the Final Report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Life as a missionary student has all kinds of challenges, but Maciej Zielinski SVD went looking for even more obstacles recently when he competed in the gruelling Spartan Race in Melbourne.

Maciej, from Poland, is in formation to be a Divine Word Missionary and is currently spending time in the AUS Province as part of the SVD Overseas Training Program.

One of the things that all Divine Word Missionaries have to do when we are assigned to a foreign country is to learn the local language. And in the process of acquiring the language skills, we progress from learning simple sentence structures using basic grammatical rules and easy vocabulary to practicing how to form more sophisticated sentences with more complex linguistic rules.

Each language system has its own unique characteristics and therefore requires a specific approach to learning it. Those of us who are assigned to Thailand usually start learning the language by memorizing basic patterns and common vocabulary that fit those patterns. For example, you can have a sentence like: “Thai food is delicious, but spicy.” Once you have mastered this pattern, you can make new sentences like: “Japanese food is delicious, but expensive.” Or “Bangkok is beautiful, but crowded.”

SVD Missionaries from across the AUS Province gathered together in Sydney for the Provincial Assembly and Chapter last week, affirming their commitment to the current missionary priorities and drawing deeper into wells of personal and community renewal.

Provincial, Fr Henry Adler SVD, says the Assembly and Chapter focused on the theme: ‘The love of Christ compels us: Rooted in the Word, Committed to Mission’.

Vocations to Religious life are not so common these days, but the newly appointed Vocations Promotion Coordinator of the SVD AUS Province says he’s convinced there are still plenty out there, and he is looking forward to the challenge of talking to people about their vocational possibilities.

Emmanuel Bautista, known as Manny, is the first lay person to take on the vocations role in the Province, a move that signals both a deepening desire for lay collaboration and the priority being given to looking at new ways of engaging in this ministry.

The Thailand-based SVD confreres had a surprise recently when the Governor of the Nong Bua Lamphu Province and staff from the Social Welfare Department paid a visit to the Mother of Perpetual Help AIDS Centre.

The Centre, located in Nong Bua Lamphu, in the North-East of Thailand, about 100km from the Mekong River on the Thai-Laos border, is an SVD ministry which works to make a difference in the life of people suffering from HIV/AIDS in the Northeast of Thailand.

The first Divine Word Missionary assigned to the new mission in Myanmar will arrive next month, to begin offering the Biblical formation that the SVD has been invited to provide in the south-east Asian nation.

Fr Jacob Kavunkal SVD will arrive in Myanmar in early March, and says he is looking forward to helping get the new mission underway.

Are we shaping mission, or is mission shaping us? That’s one of the excellent questions that we reflected on during our recent Provincial Assembly and Chapter.

In previous eras, missionaries such as us would have been seen to be heading off, Bible in hand, to shape mission in foreign lands. Now, we know that actually, it is the mission that is shaping us. It is being with the people, listening to them, learning from them.