South Sudan: Bishop Hiiboro Kussala reflecting on Vocations highlights gratitude

Paul Samasumo – Vatican City. 

“A number of words come to my mind when I reflect on my vocation story – gratitude, encouragement, unworthiness, trust, and openness. Pope Francis also uses some of these words in his message for this year’s World Day of Prayer for Vocation,” said Bishop Bishop Hiiboro Kussala.

He continued, “Gratitude —I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude for my parents, family members, close friends, and for the People of God, who sustain and have sustained me in my vocation as a priest and now as a Bishop. I am grateful for the opportunities I have had for education, growth, and change, and I am humbled by the immense love and support I continue to receive,” he said. 

God calls us despite our unworthiness

Bishop Kussala also said it is important for priests to always remember their unworthiness rather than think they are better than others.

“Sometimes young men say to me, ‘I couldn’t be a priest; I’m too unworthy of it’. I say to them – ‘precisely the opposite – it is God who calls us, knowing that we are sinners … It is essential for us priests never to think that we are better than others, more especially chosen or comfortable on a pedestal- even when some good people want to put us up there. I am a sinner, and so are all priests,” said the prelate of Tambura Yambio. 

Bishop Kussala emphasised that the priest must always trust in God and keep an open mind. “Vocation should always be open to new challenges, to new aspects of the call. It does not end with the day of ordination or the first ‘I do’ on the wedding day,” he emphasised.  

It takes time to grow into any calling

Bishop Kussala with major seminarians of St John Paul II Institute of Philosophy based in Yambio.

For Bishop Kussala, the priestly vocation and, in fact, all vocations unfold gradually as a person grows into their calling. Such a realisation will come if one cultivates a spirit of openness and generosity in responding to God’s will.

“There’s a medieval saying – ‘to those who do what is in them to do, God does not deny his grace’. Those words came to me last week when I spoke to a young nurse who qualified five years ago and who is working with HIV persons in one of our hospitals: ‘I only realise now, she said to me, that nursing is my vocation from God, and although it’s challenging and I’m afraid sometimes, I thank God for choosing it for me, and me for it,’” narrated the Bishop.