Nuncio Encourages Bishops in Southern Africa to “become models of the joy of Christ”

The American Prelate encouraged the Local Ordinaries under SACBC “to teach and make manifest” the joy of the Gospel through the celebration of sacraments as the third way of living their missionary life as Bishops as guided by Evangelii Gaudium.

“The joy of the Gospel is missionary: outward, never inward, looking. That means that a further characteristic of bishops is that our authenticity is determined by whether we move beyond ourselves – being missionary – to the people of God, who deeply yearn to receive Jesus’ joy,” Archbishop Wells told the Prelates who represent 29 episcopal Sees under SACBC.

Acknowledging that “we bishops can – at times – become … arbiters of grace rather than its facilitators,” the 56-year-old Nuncio identified the ability of Bishops to be facilitators and not limiters of the joy of Christ as another characteristic of missionary episcopate desired by Pope Francis in his Apostolic Exhortation.

“If we become “limiters” of Jesus’ joy,” Archbishop Wells noted, “we fail to authentically be bishops in the fulness of the Person of Christ.”

He emphasized referencing Evangelii Gaudium, “A further quality of the episcopate, for Pope Francis, is that we must be missionary bishops who are dispensers of Grace, welcoming all people to God’s house, which is the home of people and their problems.”

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The Papal Nuncio decried the tendency to abandon those “who have journeyed extraordinarily difficult paths” and probed, “Who will go after them?”

“In light of the Gospel, prophetically rejecting the exclusion of people at the margins of society must be a joy-giving characteristic of the episcopal vocation,” he reiterated.

Being rooted in one’s baptism with the mission to share the Gospel joyfully was also identified as an important characteristic of the ministry of Bishops in line with Pope Francis’ Exhortation.

“Fundamentally, the Holy Father is looking for a man rooted in his baptism, who frequently experiences and existentially knows the joy of Christ because he habitually reflects on the Gospel and encounters the joy that Christ gives,” Archbishop Wells told SACBC members.

He explained, “It is a bishop who knowing the world, is not selfish with the Gospel that he lives, and following Jesus’ command, has the strength, the courage and the conviction to move beyond himself to bring the joy of the Gospel to those who he governs, teaches and as a missionary, sanctifies.”