Many years ago, I was watching a TV show about newly wedded husband and wives. It was a fun show about how do you know your partner. They would have questions like, “What’s your favourite ice cream flavour?” “What’s your favourite footy team?”

 The Gospel reading of today speaks of the transfiguration of the Lord. Jesus’ appearance changed on the high mountain: his face shone like the sun and his clothes became dazzling white.

The desert was a symbol of deep significance for the Israelites as well as for early Christians.

Divine Word Missionaries in leadership positions throughout the AUS Province came together recently for a workshop to explore the role of leadership in a mission context and to share their experiences.

The workshop was held at the SVD provincial offices in Marsfield, Sydney, and included confreres from right across the province – Australia, New Zealand, Thailand and Myanmar.

As you receive this edition of In the Word, we have just entered into the season of Lent, a time which calls us especially to look at how we can become closer to God and to our neighbour.

This is an important time of reflection and action for all Christians – a time of taking spiritual stock – and for us, as Divine Word Missionaries, it is a time to dig deep and consider afresh how we are meeting the needs of those we are called to accompany and serve.

Many years ago I read a Life of Jesus by the Scripture scholar Dominic Crossan.  There were many different lives of Jesus coming out at the time as the scholars tried to identify the “historical Jesus”.

When I was in my first year in the seminary, our Religious Education teacher challenged us to see who knew the Ten Commandments and who could recite them.

The Gospel reading for the 5th Sunday of ordinary time, challenges each one of us: to go out to the world; to become salt and light for the world. Jesus uses the image of salt and light, to describe the transforming impact of God’s work in our lives and how to impact other people’s lives.

Most of us want to imagine what our child will be when s/he grows up. For some of us, we may imagine that our child will become a doctor one day, or for some may s/he will become a teacher one day, or for some, maybe if s/he could become a footy player, it’s not bad at all.

The gospel text in today’s Mass reminds us of two important realities in our life of faith – God sometimes chooses people to carry out special tasks – and if they accept God’s call it can mean that they make their calling a priority in their life and leave go of some things that are no longer all that important to them.