The tenderness of God

Fr. Livio Tonello, director

Who hasn’t been moved by the cradle of their own son, their nephew, a newborn child? An image of a deep tenderness aroused by a life that opens up to the world. It is the same tenderness with which God loves the world and which once again is revealed in the memory of the birth of his Only Begotten. It is the divine tenderness that takes on the face of its creatures, lowering itself to their level without diminishing itself. And this only out of love. I don’t want to indulge in the easy, soft, Christmas-like things that are so common. Let us not be enchanted by the “magical atmosphere” of a certain Christmas. Beyond the glitter of the feast, what is revealed is God’s care for humanity. A concern present from the beginning, when he «made leather garments, with which he clothed them» (Gen 3:21), to protect the frailty of the bodies of the progenitors as they left Eden. A concern that we find in the birth of Jesus, through the presence of Mary who «wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger» (Lk 2:7). Thinking back to the human condition, everything is exposed before the…