Friday, December 25, 2009

Pope Benedict XVI: ‘I get Knocked Down but I Get Up again’

By Deacon Keith Fournier
12/24/2009
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

Of course the Pope got back up again. His mission is only just beginning. The world sees an old man. Those with faith see a warrior.


Of course the Pope got back up again. You will never keep him down. His mission is only just beginning. The world sees an old man. Those with faith see a warrior. This is the Millennium of the Church. Though it looks dark, the dawn from on high will soon break upon us.

VATICAN CITY – (Catholic Online) – It was a British band named Chumbawamba who unleashed that awful, annoying refrain in an otherwise very forgettable song: “I get knocked down But I get up again You're never going to keep me down”. It immediately came to my mind when I left Mass this evening. I had the honor of serving as a Deacon at the Midnight Mass of the Nativity of the Lord. The Church was packed. In fact, every Mass has been packed this Christmas. People are hungry for God in a world which has lost its way and is turning to God once again to fill the hole in its collective soul.

As I turned on the radio in my car while leaving the parking lot, I heard the news on every station. The 82 year old Pope was knocked down during the procession into the Solemn Midnight Mass for the Nativity of the Lord, Christmas. Of course, I was worried. That is until I got home and studied the story a bit more. The champion of the Church got back up again and presided with dignity at the Liturgy.

The International Press seized upon the story. After all, the Press is faced with little to report on during Christmas. The real world stops to celebrate Christmas, the Nativity of the Lord. There is little left in the news cycle. Christians in America are outraged over the possibility within the current “Health Care Reform” that killing babies in the womb, like the one whose birth we celebrate this evening, might soon be paid for by tax dollars. They are ready for Christmas and pray for the Savior to come and intervene.

Most reports told us that the woman who tackled the Pope was “deranged”. They always say that. They further reported that the Pope got up “unhurt”. This woman, dressed in a red hooded sweat shirt, also knocked down Cardinal Roger Etchegaray who was one of the concelebrants in this Liturgy. He was taken to a hospital to be treated. Latest reports are that the good Cardinal is fine.

The good news is that the Vicar of Christ, the successor of the Apostle Peter, “got back up again. ” You cannot keep this dynamic, beautiful, holy Pope down. He is too much in love with the Lord Jesus. He arose to give an absolutely wonderful evangelical message to the whole world about the meaning of the One whose birth we commemorate and what that birth really means for the whole world. Here is that message in its wonderful entirety:

*****

“Dear Brothers and Sisters! "A child is born for us, a son is given to us" (Is 9:5). What Isaiah prophesied as he gazed into the future from afar, consoling Israel amid its trials and its darkness, is now proclaimed to the shepherds as a present reality by the Angel, from whom a cloud of light streams forth: "To you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord" (Lk 2:11). The Lord is here. From this moment, God is truly "God with us". No longer is he the distant God who can in some way be perceived from afar, in creation and in our own consciousness. He has entered the world. He is close to us.
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