The tiny indigenous community of Titjikala in Central Australia celebrated recently when two local teenagers returned home from boarding school in Alice Springs to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation.

Fr Bosco Son SVD, parish priest of Santa Teresa Parish, which takes in Titjikala, says the two young women, Shatona Campbell and Marlene Dinnie, were treated as heroines when the community came together to be a part of the Confirmation ceremony.

Nine young men renewed their temporary vows in the Divine Word Missionaries recently – an important step on their journey towards deeper, lifelong commitment to God through the SVD missionary life.

The students, who are studying at the SVD Aus Province’s formation house, Dorish Maru College, in Box Hill, made their renewal of vows on the vigil of the Solemnity of the Annunciation.

Every morning at 5.30am, while most of us are still dreaming, Robert and Bernadette Kobus arrive at the St Arnold Janssen Chapel in Marsfield to open up, prepare things for Mass and spend time in quiet prayer.

They are part of a valued network of lay people who support the Divine Word Missionaries in a wide variety of different ways, and they say they too value the friendship deeply.

I love technology. It’s hard to remember now how I organised myself without the help of my digital diary, which I access on my iPad or phone. Boy, does it make life easy.

These days we hold meetings by video conference to save on airfares. And we are about to step up our communications by offering a refreshed new website and an SVD App.

There is a syndrome which many of us may not have heard of. It is called the shifting baseline syndrome. This syndrome is mostly used to refer to reference points used to measure aspects of ecosystems, for example quality and quantify of fish in a lake.

It was found that as successive generations of scientists studied a particular ecosystem, they often took the baseline as what they were able to measure at the beginning of their contact with that ecosystem. Changes over time were measured against that reference point.

When SVD student Binh Tanh Nguyen first arrived in Thailand from the United States, the first thing he did was take some time to learn the language, culture and customs of the Thai people – even though it was the country of his birth.

“I was born in Thailand in a refugee camp and raised from a wee lad in the US,” he says.

A new book on Sydney’s Slovak Catholic community tells not only the history of the community and their road towards acquiring their own church, but also stands as an encouragement for future generations, its author says.

The book, entitled ‘Memory of the faithful and believers’ also outlines the long and warm relationship between the Slovak community and the Divine Word Missionaries who have served as chaplains over several decades.

As the Royal Commission wraps up its hearings into the Catholic Church’s response to child sexual abuse, the SVD Provincial, Fr Henry Adler, has recommitted the Province to safe ministry and to continuing to provide support and pastoral care to all affected.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse completed its hearings of Case Study 50, known as the Catholic ‘wrap-up’ last week, after three weeks in which the overall extent of abuse by Church personnel over several decades was laid bare in statistics which were described as “tragic and indefensible”.

The Feast of SVD missionary, St Joseph Freinademetz was an extra special celebration for the Divine Word Missionaries’ Marsfield community this year, as confreres, friends and guests joined together to mark jubilees for Fr Kevin Cantwell and Fr Don Grant.

Fr Kevin was celebrating 65 years in vows as a Divine Word Missionary and Fr Don Grant was celebrating 50 years since priestly ordination.

As this edition of In the Word reaches your inbox we are about to enter the Lenten season, a time traditionally set apart for repentance and deepening the spiritual life through prayer, fasting and almsgiving.

All of those activities are good and I will certainly give them my best shot. But what if, this Lent, as well as turning to the Word, we were also to deepen our spiritual life by more actively seeking to love our neighbour?