VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI Saturday hailed Christ’s humility, urging the faithful to look beyond the Christmas “glitter” and “enlightened reason”, and issued a powerful message for peace.
“Today Christmas has become a commercial celebration, whose bright lights hide the mystery of God’s humility, which in turn calls us to humility and simplicity,” the pope told thousands at mass in Saint Peter’s basilica.
“Let us ask the Lord to help us see through the superficial glitter of this season, and to discover behind it the child in the stable in Bethlehem, so as to find true joy and true light,” the 84-year-old pontiff said.
The German pope also called for a strengthening of faith over liberal reason, drawing an analogy with the small doorway of the Church of the Nativity in Bethleheme intended to defend the church from raiders on horseback.
“It seems to me that a deeper truth is revealed here, which should touch our hearts on this holy night: if we want to find the God who appeared as a child, then we must dismount from the high horse of our ‘englihtened’ reason.
“We must set aside our false certainties, our intellectual pride, which prevent us from recognizing God’s closeness,” he said.
He also issued a scathing rebuke against “oppressors” and warmongers around the world saying Christ would be victorious over them.
“At this hour when the world is continually threatened by violence in so many places and in so many different ways, when over and over again there are oppressors’ rods and bloodstained cloaks, we cry out to the Lord,” he said.
“In this time of ours, in this world of ours, cause the oppressors’ rods, the cloaks rolled in blood and the footgear of battle to be burned, so that your peace may triumph in this world of ours,” he added.
The pope also voiced a special prayer for those “in poverty, in suffering, as migrants, that a ray of God’s kindness may shine upon them, that they and we may be touched by the kindess that God chose to bring into the world.”
The spiritual leader of the world’s 1.1 billion Roman Catholics has appeared weary in public in recent weeks and has had an exhausting schedule this year – with particularly busy trips to Benin, Germany and Spain.
On Saturday, he made use of the same mobile platform used by his predecessor John Paul II to move around the giant basilica. The platform, which the pope began using this year, is rolled along by special Vatican aides.
The Catholic Church has also this year again been rocked by revelations about sexual abuse by priests and cover-ups by bishops stretching back decades including in Ireland, the Netherlands and the Unites States.
The Vatican has urged all bishops’ conferences around world to come up with guidelines on how to deal with abuses by spring of next year.
Also this year the pope is making a historic trip to communist Cuba and to Mexico in March, as well as possibly visiting Lebanon later in the year.