Dear Friends,

As you receive this edition of ‘In the Word’, we are embarking on Holy Week, with all the solemnity and beauty of the Paschal Triduum just a couple of days away.

Beginning on Holy Thursday with the Mass of the Lord’s Supper and concluding with the Resurrection joy of the Easter Vigil on Saturday evening, the Triduum invites us to truly enter into the commemoration of the passion, death and resurrection of Our Lord, Jesus.

This year, in a world rocked by conflict, suffering and natural disasters, we all feel the heaviness of the road to Calvary.

The wars in the Middle East and Ukraine and conflict in many other parts of the world continue to bring so much suffering to so many. We join Pope Leo XIV in continuing to pray for peace and for constructive dialogue.

I have just returned from the Central West Cluster of Parishes in outback Queensland, where floodwaters have inundated local communities. Flooding and heavy rain has also been experienced in our missions in Santa Teresa in Central Australia, Balgo in Western Australia’s Kimberley region, and on the Tiwi Islands. A cyclone off north Queensland has also hit local communities hard.

Certainly, as we journey through Holy Week this year, many people will be taking up their own crosses and following Our Lord to Calvary.

But thankfully, as Christians, the story doesn’t end there, with death on a cross. And our stories don’t end in suffering and death either.

For on Easter morning, Mary Magdalene found an empty tomb where Jesus had been laid. Death and suffering did not have the last word. Jesus was risen from the dead as he had promised. And with the resurrection of Jesus came hope for us all. A hope that overcomes everything – even death. A hope that promises us eternal life and an end to suffering.

Glimpses of this Easter hope are found in the actions of those who accompany people who are suffering. The humanitarian agencies who are providing on-the-ground assistance in war zones; the neighbours who are helping one another clean up after floodwaters have receded; missionaries who live with and accompany communities where people live with disadvantage and seek a helping hand.

So, this Holy Week, let us unite the suffering in our world, in our local communities, in our families, with the suffering of Jesus on the cross. Let us bring all the heaviness we feel to Our Lord, and wait in prayerful anticipation for the hope that awaits us in the joy of Easter.

Yours in the Word,
Fr Boni Buahendri SVD

Provincial.