Dear Friends,

As we begin the season of Advent we enter into a time of prayer, reflection, waiting and preparing for the arrival of Jesus at Christmas.

At the same time, people in the United States have celebrated Thanksgiving this week. In our part of the world, Thanksgiving is not such a prevalent holiday, but it can prompt us to realise that we have much for which to give thanks, especially in the month of November when we remember in prayer those who have gone before us.

As missionaries we are all too aware that we stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us.

This past year we have given thanks for St Arnold Janssen, who founded the Society of the Divine Word 150 years ago. We have remembered his love of God, his missionary zeal to share the good news of Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, and his unflagging persistence in the face of many obstacles. The fact that the SVD now has more than 6000 members serving as missionaries across the world is a sign of thanksgiving in itself.

Recently, we in the SVD Australia Province gave thanks for the missionary life of Fr Ennio Mantovani SVD, who died in Sydney. Originally from Italy, Fr Ennio was one of a large number of SVD missionaries from Europe who were sent as missionaries to Papua New Guinea in the 1960s and 70s. Fr Ennio immersed himself in the new culture he found himself in, served the people with faith, commitment and love in often challenging circumstances, and went on to be a great student and academic teacher of anthropology, culture, theology, missiology and even cosmology. So many of us learnt so much from Fr Ennio and from the missionaries of his generation.

So, in this month of November, we remember and we pray for all those missionaries who have gone before us and upon whose shoulders we stand. We give thanks for their faith, their dedication and their example.

In our Province we are blessed to have young seminarians, active missionaries, and retired missionaries. Each group has something to contribute to the other groups. We are not only intercultural as SVDs but also intergenerational and this provides a level of richness that we should not take for granted.

So, as we close out our month of remembrance and enter into the Advent season, let us step back, and take some time in thanksgiving to prepare our hearts for the great gift of Christmas that is to come.

Yours in the Word,

Fr Asaeli Rass SVD,

Provincial.