In this episode of The Anatomy of Tenderness Podcast we share a little bit about what’s been going on in our lives this past Autumn. We’ll be back properly in the new year with some new conversations, but for now just wanted to share a conversation about Pope Francis’ newly translated book, Christmas at the Nativity, published by Focolare Media, in time for the season of Advent.
We found this book to be such a powerful meditation on physical manifestations of tenderness, the incarnated reality of love, and wanted to unpack what that means together. While we’re approaching this reflection from the context of our Catholic faith, we hope that whatever your faith or belief-system, this conversation can offer some food for thought on the embodiment of tenderness and the physical form it can take in our lives as we show up for each other in love.
Incarnation; in-carne
"enfleshed", taking physical form in a body
—a concrete or actual form of a quality or concept. In Christian theology, the Incarnation is the concept of God becoming human at the Nativity, or birth of Christ in Bethlehem, celebrated at Christmas.
Some points we covered in this episode:
Some passages we quote in this episode of The Anatomy of Tenderness:
“Advent is the season of the seed: Christ loved this symbol of the seed. The seed, he said, is the Word of God sown in the human heart…. Advent is the season of the secret, the secret of the growth of Christ, of Divine Love, growing in silence.”—Caryll Houselander, The Reed of God
The Nativity scene that Houselander herself (both a writer and an artist) made is pictured in the photo that accompanies this episode on our website: theanatomyoftendernesspodcast.com
“This is the gift we find at Christmas. We discover to our amazement that the Lord is absolute gratuity, absolute tender love. His glory does not overwhelm us, his presence does not terrify us. He is born in utter poverty in order to win our hearts by the wealth of his love.”—Pope Francis, Christmas at the Nativity
“The child Jesus born in Bethlehem is the sign given by God to those who awaited salvation and he remains forever the sign of God’s tenderness and presence in our world… Today too children are a sign they are a sign of hope, a sign of life, but also a diagnostic sign…”—Pope Francis, Christmas at the Nativity
“Jesus, newly born, was mirrored in the eyes of the woman, in the face of his mother. From her he received his first caresses, with her he exchanged the first smiles. With her began the revolution of tenderness.”—Pope Francis, Christmas at the Nativity
Thank you so much for listening, and for your patience as we gather more conversations to share with you in the new year. Your enthusiasm and support truly means so much to us! We’re embracing a spirit of anti-perfectionism, and Sophie has sworn not to edit out our “ums” and “ers”, so you’ll have to hold her to this “new year’s resolution” going into 2024!
With much love,
Sophie & Léonie
Thank you to Focolare Media for sponsoring this episode and gifting us a copy of Christmas at the Nativity. If you’re based in the USA, you can get your own copy here, and you’ll also find it on Amazon.