Heaven Rejoices-Es Juble der Himmel

It's been a while since the world woke up to the news that Pope Benedict had passed away. As it was during his life the media had very opposing views, some old news stories aimed at painting a bad light of Ratzinger resurfaced, to the point I was asked about it over dinner one night during the Christmas vacation. 

None of this was important or necessary at the time and in my ways, it still isn't. The media will always twist things depending on their particular bias. While I instinctively want to defend him at times I also feel it's best to just let things pass, it can't really touch him anymore nor will it in the grand scheme of things change much, ultimately it all rests on God and people's trust and hope in Him. 

In the days that followed his passing many articles started to appear of personal experiences and encounters with Pope Benedict, many of which resonated with my own experience, he was after all the first Pope I was really conscious of, and his intellectual influence on me was significant. There was one in particular, one phrase in it that touched me, written by Margaret Nicholson about when the Pope came to Britain in 2010:

"Like a loving grandfather Benedict XVI addressed us, the Young Church, for the first time." It can be read in full here. For Pope Benedict showed love, and with his white hair and wrinkled face looked like a kindly grandfather. I had the chance to see him when he visited New York, we even got tipped off that not far from where I lived at the time he would arrive to stay at the Nuncio's home. We went, our seminarian friend in full garb, to be there for when he arrived, there were no barriers, it wasn't a planned or public outing and there he, his guards and the nuncio were, surrounded by several groups like us who had somehow found out his whereabouts at that particular time of the night. Then days later at the big Papal mass in Yankee Stadium, we saw him again this time at a distance and he celebrated a bilingual mass English and Spanish, his Spanish was very good, and he spoke of Christ being the way: "The Gospel teaches us that true freedom, the freedom of the children of God, is found only in the self-surrender which is part of the mystery of love." He encouraged us to embrace the challenge of living in Christ in this world that surrounds us recognising that while it is not easy it is totally worthwhile. 

Given the amount of security provided (helicopters and snippers included) by one of the many US agencies I remember with some surprise that I managed to get so close on that first evening but also when the Pope mobile made its slow progress up 5th Ave. One of my friends unwittingly was wearing black clothes, sunglasses (it was a bright sunny day) and an earpiece to hear what was being said on the radio and he managed to look like an FBI agent. None of us realised until someone came up to him in an official capacity 😆 I guess that may have helped. 

Many people over the past few weeks, possibly from before that, reflected on his first Encyclical Deus Caritas Est and how God's Love and our Love for him permeated and had to inform our lives. This was the core of Benedict's thinking, teaching, and life, and the joy it gave him radiated from his face when he preached. And instinctively shy man, he was a poetic writer and it as there in his words and writings that one could find what his shyness kept hidden from the more immediate public eye, what unfortunately allowed so many to misunderstand him.

This joy and love come through when you hear or read things in his native German and especially in videos of when he would return to Germany and celebrate some public mass or give a talk. It is evident in this video of a homily given in the Church in Freising where he was ordained. His joy at being back in that place pours out so clearly it's hard not to share in it. 

Quite appropriately during these past days the Emmanuel Community in Munster published one of it's recordings of a song with the name Es Juble der Himmel - The Heavens Rejoice. I think that heaven is rejoicing at the return of this son who so clearly loved the father.