This month we celebrated National Vocations Awareness Week here in Australia – an occasion which always prompts me to both give thanks and to pray just a little bit harder.

I give thanks for the fact that our formation house, Dorish Maru College, in Melbourne is quite literally full with young men training to be missionaries. It’s such a wonderful sign of hope for our Society and for the world.

The scholar of religion Frederick Streng defines religion as the “means toward ultimate transformation.” Ultimate transformation, says Streng, “is a fundamental change from being caught up in the troubles of common existence (sin, ignorance) to living in such a way that one can cope at the deepest level with those troubles.” Self-transformation is not the exclusive agenda of religion since anything that we engage in with intention and purpose can lead to transformation physically, mentally and spiritually. However, it is religion that makes the goal of self-transformation its highest, if not the only, priority.

While one can agree that all religions set out to help the human person achieve ultimate transformation, the tools and methods that each religious system employs varies.

When Clement Baffoe was growing up in a small village in Ghana, he had not much interest in his Catholic faith and would not have predicted that in 2017 he would be in Melbourne, Australia, completing his formation to become a missionary priest.

“Faith was part of my growing up but not taken seriously since my parents were Catholics but were not ardent ones,” he says. “I went to Church when I wanted. I preferred to go to a fetish shrine and enjoy myself because there were many more shrines with attractive activities in my village than churches.”

“Finally we got a real church, not a barn!” the faithful of the St Patrick’s church community in Wainuiomata, New Zealand, exclaimed when the church reopened after extensive earthquake repairs.

Cardinal John Dew, the Archbishop of Wellington, blessed and reopened the newly renovated and strengthened building last month. Local Maori leaders, Anglican pastors and community members and parishioners from right across the Parish of the Holy Spirit were also present.

Nine Divine Word Missionaries working in the Thailand District of the SVD AUS Province gathered together recently for their Local Chapter meeting.

The meeting was part of their preparations for the Provincial Chapter meeting, to be held in Sydney in February, and the 18th General Chapter, to be held in Rome later next year.

Helping people to access the Bible, understand its ongoing relevance, and apply it to their daily lives is the chief hope of Fr Elmer Ibarra SVD in his new role as Bible Coordinator for the AUS Province.

Fr Elmer says he is delighted to be taking up his new position because it is central to the life of the Divine Word Missionaries.

Fr Vincent Mai SVD was born in Saigon, Vietnam, and since being assigned to the SVD AUS Province, has ministered in Alice Springs, Santa Teresa, and now Katherine, in the Northern Territory. Here Vincent shares his story, along with his hopes for his new parish assignment in the Top End.

"My hopes for ministry in Katherine are that, in my role as priest, I can share and proclaim the Good News for my sisters and brothers here as much as possible."

One of the faithful religious nuns who was present on my farewell day from a mission experience I took part in during 2010 dropped a card into my hands which is for me an all-time inspiration: “Life is a journey consisting of different steps of staircases.

Whenever you get to one set of stairs, there will always be a platform leading to another. Don’t get discouraged on the way. Take every step as a challenge and move forward”. These words of encouragement and zeal kept me going even when the going got tough.

The roof of St Maximilian Kolbe parish in Kingston-Marden, Queensland is freshly adorned with rows of solar panels – a concrete sign of the parish community’s commitment to playing its part in preserving God’s creation in the spirit of Pope Francis’ Laudato Si.

Parish Priest Fr Sunil Paul Nagothu SVD says parishioners have worked hard to raise funds to support the transition to renewable energy, with the purchase and installation of the solar panels now providing a sustainable power solution for the parish.

A renewed commitment to sharing resources for SVD Mission and Communications around the world was one of the chief outcomes of a special meeting held in Rome recently.

The Mission Secretary for the SVD AUS Province, Fr Truc Quoc Phan, was among a group of Directors of Mission Offices and Communications Offices from various nations who attended the special gathering.