The first Plenary Council Assembly was a graced experience of prayer, listening and discernment which has laid the groundwork for an action plan to carry the Church in Australia into the future, according to the SVD members who took part.
Provincial, Fr Asaeli Rass SVD, and Parish Priest of Our Lady of Sacred Heart Parish in Alice Springs, Fr Prakash Menezes SVD said the Assembly allowed all members to contribute and to feel seen and heard.
As I write this message, millions of Australians are once again living in COVID lockdown across New South Wales, the ACT, and Victoria. Gatherings are banned, families are separated and many people have either lost employment or taken a blow to their income. Of course, many are also suffering from the health effects of COVID and a significant number of people have died. We pray for them.
In amongst these challenges and difficulties we have been forced to continually adapt to the new circumstances we face. The SVD has also been called upon to adapt to new ways of doing things and in September we will hold our first ever online Provincial Assembly.
Today we celebrate the mystery of the Holy Trinity. It is a mystery that is part of our Catholic DNA, but we seldom reflect on it. When we make the sign of the Cross, we say: “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
As this edition of In the Word arrives in your inbox we are still rejoicing in the recent feast of Pentecost and the great gift of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in our Church.
St Arnold Janssen, the founder of the Divine Word Missionaries, had a particular devotion to the Holy Spirit. He felt, that in his lifetime in the late 1800s in Europe, the Holy Spirit was the underrated personage of the Holy Trinity and that more emphasis was placed on the Father and the Son.
There has been a saying going around our Community that the Feast of the Ascension reminds us that Jesus decided thereafter “to work from home”.
One of the exciting events in Track and Field is the 4 X 100 metre relay. There’s a team of four athletes and they’re standing 100 metres apart and the first athlete runs for 100 metres then they pass the baton to the next athlete and the fourth athlete gets the baton and runs straight until the finish line.
‘Together in the Spirit’ is the theme of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Sunday this year (Sunday, July 5), and what a perfect theme it is as we all emerge slowly from this period of COVID-19 isolation.
We might still be maintaining our social distance and our gatherings are still only small, but as Australians and as Christians, we are ‘Together in Spirit’ – something my recent years as a missionary in Central Australia really emphasised for me.
The inner life of the Trinity, the Communion we call the Triune God, is a Mystery of Mutual Loving Relationships and yet, through our baptism, we are invited into the life of this Eternal Communion.
There has been a saying going around our Community that the Feast of the Ascension reminds us that Jesus decided thereafter “to work from home”. But Jesus promised not to leave us orphans.
We think of Pentecost as that special time when the Holy Spirit came down upon the disciples in the upper room (Acts 2:1-13). Even though all the disciples were Galileans, they began to speak in many different languages which were, nonetheless, understood by the many people present. This came to be known as “speaking in tongues”. The Holy Spirit is indeed a Spirit of both diversity and unity, writes Fr Michael Knight SVD.
This is a very different outcome to a certain situation portrayed in the Book of Genesis, Chapter 11:1-9, in which people who speak the same language come together to build a tower (The Tower of Babel) that will supposedly reach heaven itself and make the people to be like gods.. To counter this sin of ego driven pride, God causes many languages to arise amongst those constructing the Tower and the result is that the whole project comes to an abrupt halt in complete and utter confusion.
