The Australian Province of the Divine Word Missionaries has an extra spring in its step this month, following the participation of many of our confreres and lay collaborators in the “Mission: One Heart Many Voices” conference.

The conference was a wonderful “Mission-fest” and a major ecclesial event for the Church in Australia. Among the 370 participants there were 32 SVD confreres from various parts of the Province, and seven of our lay collaborators from Melbourne, Sydney and New Zealand. And of course, the principal keynote speaker was one of our own confreres, Stephen Bevans SVD, from Chicago’s Catholic Theological Union.

In a range of dynamic presentations, Stephen reminded us that the mission we are all engaged in is primarily God’s, not ours.

“God’s mission is prior to our mission; God’s mission calls forth the Church; God’s mission is wider than the Church’s mission. God is primary; we are secondary. Our task is to point to where God is already at work. Our task is to sacramentalise God’s missionary presence by our own missionary practice,” he said.

You will read more about Stephen’s proposition that we are partners with God in mission, further on in this edition of ‘In the Word’.

There were also outstanding presentations from others, including Sr Maureen McBride RNDM, the Congregational Leader of the Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions, and Dr Gemma Tulud Cruz, Senior Lecturer in Theology at Australian Catholic University, Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane and Nobel Prize laureate, Jose Ramos-Horta. A presentation from Mrs Kath Evans and Sr Mary Ellen O’Donoghue RSJ on Living and Leading Mission in the Spirit of Mary MacKillop was also inspirational. Many delegates spoke of the excellent workshops they took part in, which provided practical tools for enhancing mission.

The challenge after attending such a great conference is how to incorporate all that we’ve heard and learnt into the daily mission of our lives.

One way that we in the SVD AUS Province tried to address this was by holding a workshop in the days directly following the conference for 21 of our confreres who are aged under 50. Entitled ‘Leadership in Action: Recapturing and reliving Transformative Attitudes for Intercultural Mission’, the workshop helped us to look at ways of putting into action much of what we’d been immersed in over the previous few days. As I write this, I am in Nong Bua Lampu, Thailand, presenting material from the Mission conference and conducting the workshop with the seven confreres aged under 50 here.

I’m really looking forward to seeing how each of us brings our new mission insights to the individual ministries in which we are engaged and also how we share them with our confreres and with the communities we serve.

I hope you enjoy reading more from the conference, as well as other Province and Mission news in this edition of ‘In the Word’. Thank you for being our partners in God’s great mission.

Yours in the Word,

Fr Tim Norton SVD

Provincial Superior