Why COVID-19 Crisis is an Opportunity for Spiritual Growth: South Sudanese Bishop

With restrictions on public worship, Bishop Hiiboro observes that COVID-19 “has made almost everybody who is a believer to be an evangelizer” as people are forced to share the Word of God through various platforms such as radio, TV and social media.

In the September 3 editorial message, the 56-year-old Prelate says that he has witnessed the sharing of spiritual messages on various platforms, scenarios that make him “appreciate the fact that when bad situations present themselves to us, God is never silent.”

“He (God) can seize that and make it the best instrument for his people. So now we are having more preachers,” he says and appeals, “Let us use our social media much more and all the avenues that are there to spread the Word of God.”

That the “majority” of Christians have not been able to receive Holy Eucharist due to the COVID-19 restrictions is another reason why the Bishop of Tombura-Yambio considers the pandemic an opportunity for spiritual growth.

Without the Holy Eucharist, he says, Christians have “received the Holy Eucharist of desire,” which has intensified a spiritual hunger “to go deeper into our relationship with God.”

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Bishop Hiiboro also considers the pandemic an opportunity for spiritual growth because it has “brought on us the discipline to keep distance and that distance I could call it spiritual.”

“Keep distance in order to see yourself as a unique important human being. You are different and the good qualities you have to enhance the relationship with others that we must never do away with,” he urges in the September 3 editorial message.

The South Sudanese Prelate assures Christians that the COVID-19 pandemic “does not take away His Cross of Salvation, His Cross of Hope, His Cross of Achievement in our lives.

He adds, “Whatever situations we find ourselves in, let us feel that God is still available, God is still present. So, I call upon all of us to rejuvenate our relationship with God and move forward.”

“He didn’t create us in vain so on his promise that I have come so that all of you widows, all of you young people, all of you orphans, all of you people with any kind of physical disabilities or challenges, and all of you who are divorced, and to all of you who are having special problems of health, God has come to give us life and life in abundance,” Bishop Hiiboro reflects.