Happy New Year! I hope that as we’re already in the last week of January, it’s not too late to say that. Although, of course, for our Asian friends, the New Year is still to come, so maybe I’m in time after all.

I’m not really one for New Year’s Resolutions. I mean, like most people, I’ll try to eat better and exercise more and all that, but really, I prefer to just try and stay open to the stirrings of the Holy Spirit in my life, and in this busy, noisy world, that can be a challenging enough resolution in itself.

This year the SVD AUS Province will be relying more than ever on the Holy Spirit to guide us forward, with our Provincial Assembly and Chapter taking place in February. You can read more about those events elsewhere in this edition of In the Word, but there’s no doubt we’ll be prayerfully calling on the Holy Spirit to be with us in that process of discernment. By the end of both the Assembly and Chapter, we hope to have had a time of personal and community renewal and have plotted out a path forward for the next few years in our Province’s mission life.

The early part of this year will also see the first missionary from our Province take up his assignment in Myanmar, our newest mission outreach. Fr Jacob Kavunkal SVD will take up residence from the beginning of March to undertake the Bible Ministry we have been asked to provide there. He will later be followed by three other confreres, who will first spend time in the Philippines undergoing a formation program on Biblical Ministry in Asia.

In all of this, as with our other ministries with indigenous Australians, multicultural parish communities, missionary formation, and work with ethnic communities, we look for constant guidance from the Holy Spirit. The SVD founder, St Arnold Janssen, who’s feast day we celebrated this month, also knew how important the Holy Spirit was in the plans he was making for a new missionary congregation, back in the late 1800s. He said, “Everything is possible by the power of the Holy Spirit’s grace”.

And so, on that powerful note of hope and confidence, we move into 2018 brimming with enthusiasm, open to the stirrings of the Spirit, and thankful for the opportunities we have been given to share the mission of Jesus Christ in our part of the world.

We can’t do it alone though, and we thank you, our partners in mission for all the support you give us.

May God bless you and your family as you head into the New Year too.

 

Yours in the Word,

Fr Henry Adler SVD,

Provincial.