Volume 35 No. 2 | Winter 2025 6 Society Matters SVD gives thanks in Jubilee Year for all who support them in God’s mission The SVD’s 150th Jubilee Year continues to be marked by celebration and thanksgiving both in the Australia Province and around the globe. Under the theme, ‘Witnessing to the Light: From everywhere for everyone’, Divine Word Missionaries have been marking the Jubilee in a variety of different ways and giving thanks for their collaboration with all who have joined them and supported them in mission. The SVD began with the dream of German priest, St Arnold Janssen, to establish a mission house in Steyl, the Netherlands and send out missionaries from Europe to the world to share the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Divine Word. Today, it is composed of nearly 6000 members of 76 nationalities, serving the mission in 79 countries with 59 provinces, regions and missions. The Society of the Divine Word is the sixth largest male religious congregation in the Catholic Church in recent years and the biggest missionary congregation. Thanks to the sustaining generosity of friends and benefactors over those 150 years and continuing today, the SVD is present with the people on every continent except Antarctica, with a special focus on the poor, the marginalised, and those in most need. Earlier this year, the celebration of the feast days of the Society of the Divine Word’s two saints, St Arnold Janssen and St Joseph Freinademetz, took on special significance in the Jubilee Year. The Australian Province of the Society of the Divine Word celebrated the feast days with special Masses and social gatherings of confreres, SSpS Sisters, parishioners, lay partners and partners in mission, while in Rome the day was marked by the release of a new book, entitled ‘Treasures of the Past and Experiences of the Present’. St Arnold founded the Society of the Divine Word on September 8, 1875. He later went on to found two orders of Religious Women, the Servant Sisters of the Holy Spirit and the Servants of the Holy Spirit of Perpetual Adoration. His feast day is on January 15, the date of his death in 1909. On March 2, 1879, the first two SVD missionaries set out for China. One of these was Joseph Freinademetz. St Joseph, whose feast day is on January 29, stayed for many years in China, during turbulent political and cultural times, and he faced many challenges, but he came to know and love the Chinese people and was loved by them in return. The two feast days were celebrated across the Australia Province, from small villages in Thailand to parishes in New Zealand, Myanmar and around Australia, from Balgo in Western Australia to the Tiwi Islands in the north, Central Australia, parishes in Queensland, the Northern Territory, New South Wales and Victoria. Provincial, Fr Asaeli Rass SVD, said the founder’s feast day in the Jubilee Year was a time to give thanks. “It is an opportunity to sincerely thank the Triune God for our founder Arnold Janssen; for his foresightedness, his sacrifice and love for God’s mission which allowed him to create this enterprise which has now grown to become the sixth largest religious order in the missionary world. “It is an opportunity for us to give thanks for being part of
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