The Feast of SVD missionary, St Joseph Freinademetz was an extra special celebration for the Divine Word Missionaries’ Marsfield community this year, as confreres, friends and guests joined together to mark jubilees for Fr Kevin Cantwell and Fr Don Grant.

Fr Kevin was celebrating 65 years in vows as a Divine Word Missionary and Fr Don Grant was celebrating 50 years since priestly ordination.

As this edition of In the Word reaches your inbox we are about to enter the Lenten season, a time traditionally set apart for repentance and deepening the spiritual life through prayer, fasting and almsgiving.

All of those activities are good and I will certainly give them my best shot. But what if, this Lent, as well as turning to the Word, we were also to deepen our spiritual life by more actively seeking to love our neighbour?

As you can understand, Fr John has asked me to preach the Feast Day Homily of our Founder, St Arnold Janssen. It is an honour to be asked, so thank Fr John.

Father Arnold, that’s how we know him, was a man of vision, dedication and stubborn commitment. He was born nearly 200 hundred years ago on the border of Germany and Holland. He became a priest, a teacher, publisher, and a man fired with a desire for the Germans to do something for the foreign missions. Till then there was no German foreign mission foundation.

Every year, as Christmas nears, people all over the world set up Nativity scenes in churches and in their homes to commemorate the birth of Jesus Christ. This is no exception in Thailand. Every church, from the grand cathedral to the humble village church, has a Nativity scene. However, in some churches around the country, not all of the Nativity scenes are set up by Thai Christians. Some of them are made by Vietnamese migrant workers.

Catholic Vietnamese migrant workers are no longer unfamiliar in Thai churches. They have become a familiar sight to the local parishioners.

Holy Spirit Sisters (SSpS) of the Australian Province gathered together recently for their Provincial Assembly and Chapter meeting with the focus on discerning God’s Dreams for the Province.

“The theme of our Assembly and Chapter was ‘Recognising God’s Dream for our Province in our Present Reality’,” says Sr Sarita.

The Vietnamese migrants living and working in New Caledonia will have a comforting presence amongst them for Christmas, with Fr Truc Quoc Phan SVD arriving to help them celebrate.

With only few Vietnamese priests in the Pacific countries, Fr Truc, who is the SVD AUS Province Mission Secretary and was born and raised in Vietnam, pays regular visits to New Caledonia to help meet the faith needs of the migrant people.

If you have a heart for Mission, there’s one date in 2017 you won’t want to miss – the Mission: One Heart Many Voices conference, which runs from May 15-17 in Sydney.

Fr Tim Norton SVD will return from Italy where he is working, to co-MC the event, and will bring with him valuable experience and a perspective on intercultural mission that will add to the facilitation of the conference.

The annual SVD Marsfield Community Carols by Candlelight headed outdoors this year to give a new twist to the multicultural celebration which featured choirs and performers from a broad range of ethnic communities.

The multicultural flavour of the evening was topped off when everyone came together to sing Silent Night, with verses in different languages as well as in English. And there was even a visit from Santa for the kids.

Well it’s summer time and Christmas is almost upon us. Even after all these years as a missionary in the southern hemisphere, I still love the novelty of Christmas in summer. The tradition of sitting outside on warm evenings at carols by candlelight, with children running around joyfully is a beautiful one.

And yet, we are aware that elsewhere in the world, things are not so happy this Christmas. As I write this message we are seeing unimaginable scenes of human misery coming daily from the besieged city of Aleppo in Syria. And in Berlin, people have been killed in a truck attack on a Christmas market.

Parishioners of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart parish in Alice Springs celebrated the Feast of Christ the King by coming together for Mass and then gathering at the historic Telegraph Station for a fun family picnic and barbecue.

They were celebrating the end of the Year of Mercy and the beginning of the Year of the Family which is taking place across the Diocese of Darwin as a way of responding to Pope Francis’ apostolic letter Amoris Laetitia.