“Tenderness is God’s style.” This phrase came to my heart one day and I understood that love, if it is not close and concrete, if it does not go from ideas to gestures, to hands, especially with the wounded, is not love.

Today, many words have been emptied of their semantic content. Words seem to have lost their “home.” Tenderness is one of them. It’s used for almost everything: a kind gesture, an emotional reaction, a nice phrase on social media. But deep down, what we call tenderness today is often just a purely emotional reaction. And so, without realizing it, we’ve forgotten what’s essential.

Tenderness is the way in which God draws near and touches human wounds.

We are all wounded, we have wounds in body and soul.  Only corpses are impassive. We all need to be healed, to be comforted. We are all poor and needy.

Tenderness is to the soul what emotionalism is to the body. One gives life, the other consumes it. When I embrace a body, I embrace a person. The entirety of that unique being, and that gesture, becomes unrepeatable.

We live in times of inflamed emotions, yet weakened bonds. Of hypersensitive skin and hardened hearts. With a fear of the attachment that makes us dependent. We stumble and become bodies that react and souls that don’t respond. Perhaps that’s why we need to slowly revisit what tenderness truly is, that language God speaks with preference ; and contrast it with emotionalism, that force which, as Simone Weil describes, belongs to the law of gravity : it pulls us down, toward the immediate, toward what demands little and empties us quickly.

TENDERNESS as MERCY

The encounter with the wounds of the other

Tenderness is not a feeling. It is charity made visible.  It is a way of seeing and being “in God’s style.”  A stable disposition of the soul that allows us to see the other in their value and their fragility, without taking advantage of either. That is why tenderness does not invade or demand:  it sustains.

Pope Francis sums up God’s style in three words: closeness, mercy, and tenderness.

Closeness is the first form of tenderness. Being close, very close, with words, gestures, glances, and even silence… Closeness despite personal, cultural, and social differences. It is a concrete action that affects each person and is voluntary. I am the one who approaches, the one who speaks first, the one who offers, the one who accompanies, the one who supports. The one who initiates the respectful, patient, and personal dialogue…

Mercy  , that second form of tenderness. Etymologically, “to place one’s heart in the miseries” of oneself and others. To kiss the festering wound so that it does not disfigure the soul that bears it. Compassion, as a language that allows itself to be affected in order to sustain .

And all within the context of tenderness, understood as love that becomes close and concrete. That love that moves from the heart to the tangible, visible, audible…

From the heart, to the eyes, to the ears, to the hands… Faced with the pain of Martha and Mary, Jesus is moved and weeps before raising his friend from the dead (Jn 11:33-36)

He is a God who bends down, draws near, humbles himself to lift. A God who enters history not through force, but through the “gentle firmness of a Child who arrives.” Benedict XVI added that God always acts  “with a heart that sees.”

Tenderness shapes how we see, listen, and act. It is not a soft “feeling,” but a way of acting that recognizes the dignity of the other, especially in their vulnerability. It is the visible manifestation of a deep-seated compassion that recognizes in the other “a you” in their uniqueness, not a functional object at my service.

EMOTIVISM: 

WHEN THE BODY TAKES CHARGE

At the opposite extreme lies emotivism, that cultural current that has transformed emotions into moral criteria. That sentimentality that moves to the rhythm of momentary stimuli.

Alasdair MacIntyre denounced it with lucidity:  if good is “what makes me feel good”, morality is reduced to impulses.

And if emotion rules, freedom is silent.

Emotivism has three devastating effects:

1. It entrenches personal immaturity; we become eternally infants.
2. It makes us narcissistic.
3. It makes us fragile and like clay.

GRAVITY AND WINGS

(SIMONE WEIL 1909-1943)

Simone Weil spoke of two forces that govern human life:  gravity and grace

Gravity is what falls by itself, what does not demand effort, what follows the slope: that is emotivism.

Grace is what gives us wings : the tenderness that uplifts, illuminates, and liberates.

I think it’s a good example.

RECOVER TENDERNESS

A charity emergency

Three paths:

1. Looking slowly is not staring or intrusively.  Tenderness begins in the eyes: pausing, looking slowly, and allowing oneself to be moved without passing by, without slipping away. This translates into concrete gestures: putting down your phone, calling people by name, looking them in the eye—the homeless person, the stranger, those close to you, those nearest to you.
2. To synchronize the heart, to listen to the other’s heart… The cry and the silence that, many times, howls; not to interrupt, to ask about the pain, with more affection the greater the pain; to change plans when necessary; to stop, discarding other previous options.
3. Allowing oneself to be touched by God in order to learn to “touch the flesh of the other,”  tenderness becomes concrete in the visible, which is a reflection of the invisible; otherwise, it becomes corrupted: timely embraces, material help, presence  beside those in need: in loneliness, in grief, in illness…

All this in a frenetic pace, enslaved by multitasking, besieged by thousands of urgent matters, can mean reorganizing time, giving up a previous schedule to serve others.

CONCLUSION

Tenderness is the strength of those who have won the inner battle. And that battle is fought in prayer, enjoying God’s tenderness.

Emotivism is the renunciation of freedom. It is that mud on our wings that prevents us from lifting our gaze.

Only tenderness—the kind God tirelessly practices—  makes encounters possible, repairs what is broken, and gives us back the ability to fly.

In a society that “doesn’t even see the one who stumbles,” tenderness becomes revolution, a countercultural sign.

To introduce into the world the logic of the love of a GOD who is unconditional love…

He becomes a baby in a manger so that it’s easy to hug him, kiss him, smile at him…