The second Jubilee Online Lecture hosted by the SVD Australia Province this month highlighted the need for authentic Christian witness and a commitment to go out to the peripheries of both Church and society in living out Christ’s mission.

The keynote presenter at the webinar was Fr Stanislaus Lazar SVD, with Fr Albano Da Costa SVD responding on the theme of ‘Witnessing to the Light: From Everywhere for Everyone – a Mission Perspective’.

Fr Stanislaus has been the Mission Secretary for the SVD Generalate from 2012-2025. He has a PhD in missiology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, and was the director of the Ishvani Kendra Institute of Missiology and Communications in India. He served one term as president of the International Association of Catholic missiologists and was also the provincial superior of the SVD’s Mumbai province in India.

Fr Albano is the Vice-Provincial of the SVD AUS Province and has academic credentials from the Pontifical Gregorian University and the School of African and Oriental Studies at the University of London. He has lectured at Yara theological Union and is now pursuing further studies at Australian National University in Canberra. Fr Albano is President of the Australian Association of Mission Studies and a member of international and Australian mission networks.

In introducing the speakers, the moderator, Fr Anthony Le Duc SVD, said the Jubilee Lecture Series is part of the year-long celebration of the SVD’s 150^th Jubilee, which began on September 8, 2024 and will culminate on September 8 this year, the 150^th anniversary of the founding of the Society of the Divine Word. Each lecture will look at one of the SVD’s four Characteristic Dimensions: mission animation, biblical animation, communication and justice, peace and integrity of creation.

Fr Stan began by quoting Pope Paul VI’s famous statement that contemporary men and women listen more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if they listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.

He said that along with authentic witness, there is also a need for proclamation.

“There is no witness without proclamation. We know that witness and proclamation are part and parcel of our mission. There is no witness without proclamation, but there should be no proclamation without witness, otherwise it will be only noise. Therefore, both are important,” he said.

Recalling Pope Francis’ words that “witness is essential in the Church today”, Fr Stan said authentic  witness involves giving testimony of what we have seen and experienced.

“Witnessing to the light means actively participating in God's mission by testifying to Jesus Christ the light of the world through word, deed and presence,” he said.

“Therefore, to bear witness to Christ is embodying His manifestation of God's love, because through His life, death and resurrection, He has shown this loving God.”

Fr Stan identified four aspects of Christian witness: Individual Witness, Community Witness, Institutional Witness and Common Witness.

Examples of individual witness include the compelling example of saints and faith figures like Mother Teresa or the Italian teenager Blessed Carlo Acutis and many others, he said.

The witness of faith communities is also crucial to mission.

Fr Stan said as Divine Word Missionaries, interculturality plays a key role in living a life of community witness.

“Now, as SVDs, we know very well that interculturality is part of our DNA. So, through our interculturality, we could show a real, authentic witness. By being an intercultural community and doing intercultural mission … and living it brightly then certainly it would be a very attractive way in which we were able to show Christ.”

Fr Stan said that the Church itself is an institutional witness to Christ, having both local and global structures, such as schools, hospitals, orphanages.

“She self-embodies in her own life and the structures the kingdom, values of freedom, fellowship and justice. So, by bearing these values, certainly we can show witness,” he said.

The Church’s sexual abuse crisis and other corruption in places has been a counter-witness, which makes it more important for those in the Church to live out authentic Christian witness.

“This witness has the power to change, challenge and transform the world, and that's the challenge that the Church has as an institutional witness,” he said.

Finally, Fr Stan said that common witness involves Christian unity and interfaith dialogue which represents “an invitation to co-exist and to work together”.

He said the call in the Jubilee theme to be witnesses to the Light “from Everywhere for Everyone” involved recognising the work of God in other religions and cultures, resulting in a mission that is invitational, relational and non-violent to all, with a commitment to promoting peace and harmony with other religions.

Fr Stan said Pope Francis has emphasised that mission requires reaching out to those on the peripheries and working synodally, themes that are also prominent in the Universal Church’s Jubilee Year of Hope.

“So, we go not to the centre, but we go to the periphery. And as you know, most of the time our SVD mission is going to the periphery. We are always trying to take up the parish, which others have neglected. This is the mission of the SVDs, that the witnessing to the light here is that giving hope, and that particular hope is very important, that somehow, we move ahead in such a way that we try to bring the periphery into the centre.

“Pope Francis said synodality is essentially missionary and vice versa. Mission is always synodal … it has to be part of each and every one of us.

“So, my question is, how far have we involved the poor and marginalised and the young people in the synodal process? I think the Church, as we said at the beginning, we are just on the way. We have not reached there, and we have still much more to go.”

In responding, Fr Albano emphasised the importance of prophetic witness and the need to widen the scope of the tent in mission.

“Prophets do not dwell in the world of abstractions and ideas for their own sake, but they speak concretely to those on the fringes, inviting, challenging, encouraging, and many times, insisting their listeners to take their rightful God given place,” he said.

“And in doing so, they create spaces for others to join the prophetic chorus of hope.”

Fr Albano said he believed this was why Pope Francis had said in his Message for World Mission Sunday this year that all Christians are called to be missionaries of hope among all peoples.

“So, dare we go forth in courage, trust and hope, remembering, claiming and acting on our prophetic roles to point to the true light we collectively name the Christ?”

Fr Albano said the Synod on Synodality confirmed that “we must empower all Catholics to actively participate in the Church's mission”.

“And so, a conversion of culture, of habits, of ways of doing things is very, very important. And along with that, the aspect of formation … to implement the whole understanding of synodality, how to be a synodal church, how to be a synodal parish, the future of synodality,” he said

 Going to the margins is an essential part of synodality, as is interfaith dialogue, said Fr Albano.

“How much do we truly consider the changing context of our world concerning the mission of the unordained, especially women, at the intersectionality of coloniality culture racism and genderism and entrenched biases and static mindsets?”

Fr Albano concluded with a poem by Amanda Gorman urging people not just to see the light in our world but to be the light.

“And so let us continue to be God's witness, giving witness to Christ's light, wherever we are based,” he said.