SHOWING THE WAY TO GOD
Fr Quyen Vu SJ, Australian Provincial
As we begin the new year, I invite you to consider two documents from last year that might help guide our path in this year ahead. The first is the final document from the Synod on Synodality. Pope Francis has asked the whole Church to embrace and enact this document. It deals with the reality of the Church as it is today and provides ways for us to consider how we can walk together in our concrete reality.
The Church is always to be engaging in the world, but its orientation is to draw the world into relationship with God. We must model, in our relationships, the Kingdom of God which we proclaim. This is the enactment of reconciliation. This is not the call of some Christians but of all the baptised. As the Synod document highlights: “Every baptised person is called to be a protagonist of mission since we are all missionary disciples.”
We are all called to contribute with our particular gifts and through our charisms. One of the most important ways that Jesuits have participated in drawing people into relationship with God has been through sharing devotion to the Sacred Heart. Late last year, Pope Francis wrote a letter to the whole Church encouraging us to continue to gaze upon Jesus’ Sacred Heart. His letter reminded the Jesuits of our particular responsibility for sharing this symbol of God’s love for all the world. We need to keep finding new ways to communicate that love, expressed through the Scared Heart, in all we do.
In 2025 the Australian Jesuit Province continues to look with hope to its future, amidst all the work undertaken by Jesuits and by so many throughout our ministries. As we do, we will need to hold to our fundamental mission, which is to evangelise, to share the Good News. This means in contemporary ways we need to share in the work of reconciling the world to God’s love, so beautifully expressed in Jesus’ Most Sacred Heart.
Video by Janark Gray.
Banner photo courtesy of Fr Trung Nguyen SJ.
To enquire about becoming a Jesuit in Australia, contact vocations@sjasl.org.au and for more info, visit our Vocations page.