Your two models in faith, Elijah and Mary, follow different callings, yet it is the one God who calls them. Both were able to say yes to God, trusting in his guidance. Elijah repeatedly stands up for his faith in the one God. Along his path he must learn much about God: He is mighty and greater than all our images of Him. Elijah experiences success with his message — yet he also encounters hardship. God does not spare him the journey through the desert. Often, He remains hidden, perceptible only in a gentle whisper of wind, not in storm or in fire. Elijah speaks out against injustice and exploitation; his faith in God cannot be separated from this prophetic mission. Time and again Elijah is brought to his limits — and yet, in the end, he is led by trust.

Whoever becomes a bishop today carries a prophetic mission. In our time and culture, he must remind people of the one God whom many have forgotten and who, for not a few here in Germany, seems to play no role at all. The appropriate gesture, however, is not a raised and threatening finger. Those who believe in God and feel guided in trust may rather bear witness to that trust and to the God without whom the believer cannot imagine life. Personally, I would lack the very foundation of my life if God were absent. Whoever exercises a prophetic ministry as bishop today may invite others to discover this great, beautiful, and inspiring God who guides people and grants them trust and hope. Yet, like the prophet, God’s witnesses today are not spared the desert, nor the silence of God, nor the darkness of faith. Elijah stands for God’s fidelity and he himself remains faithful to his God.

Mary stands for the unique vocation of allowing God to become man. So the Gospels tell us. She may not always have understood her Son, yet she remained faithful to Him, even beneath the cross. God becomes human. He takes an interest in us; no one is indifferent to Him. He humbles Himself and becomes like us in all things. Whoever serves today as priest or bishop — or in other pastoral ministries, as woman or man — is called into this same attitude of closeness to the people. Mary said yes to this calling and has thus become our model: to say yes to our own mission, to make God tangible and present in this world.

You, dear Father Joshy, have spoken your yes to the path God now asks you to walk — in this time, in this diocese, with the people of our day. For this we are deeply grateful and I personally thank you. For more than twenty years you have lived this service in the diocese and in your Order. Now you continue it as Auxiliary Bishop of Mainz. I am convinced that the people of our diocese will encounter you as a credible witness and successor of the Apostles.

With your episcopal motto, “Led by Trust,” you offer us a strong personal testimony of faith. In your insignia, the dolphin appears as a symbolic animal — an unusual heraldic figure. In fact, the dolphin already played a role in antiquity and later in Christian imagery. Dolphins are regarded as companions and protectors of human beings in stormy seas. They give direction and orientation, and at times they rescue those in danger of drowning. In ancient art, dolphins guide the souls of the departed to a blessed afterlife. Early Christian legends and sermons adopted these interpretations. The dolphin has become a sign of fidelity, love, and happiness, but also of companionship and protection, even into God’s eternal world. In this way, the dolphin also symbolizes the fidelity of God, who accompanies us in life and in death. Dear Father Joshy, may the dolphin always remind you that you are carried, accompanied, and guided, even in the storms of life. May you find your orientation in the Word of God, even when the waves run high. We wish that people may experience you as a companion, as one who can and wishes to offer direction. May you continually point to the great horizon granted to us in faith in eternal life.

An episcopal ordination is a great celebration of faith for our diocese. Through the laying on of hands and prayer, you are entrusted with the episcopal ministry. Like Elijah and Mary, you do not proclaim yourself, but the one God who desires till today to become present among us. People will sense that you do not proclaim an abstract message, but the One in whom you personally believe, by whom you allow yourself to be seized and inspired. It takes courage to allow yourself to be sent into a diocese that has become your home over many years, even as you remain mindful of your original homeland. In your calling, it becomes visible that we are a universal Church. I am grateful to Pope Leo XIV for this step here in Germany, in the Diocese of Mainz. Faith unites across all the boundaries that human beings may draw.

To you, dear Father Joshy, I wish each day the firm trust of knowing yourself guided. May you pass on this trust in your encounters, in the celebration of the liturgy, and in the many daily tasks that bear witness to the one God. Dolphins perceive their surroundings through sound waves and thus find orientation. We too do not live in an artificial separate world. The world and the society in which we stand are our necessary partners in dialogue. Let us together keep alive the faith in the one God who has called us all to stand before Him and to serve Him.