Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Tenderness: a spiritual ‘currency’?
Tenderness: a spiritual ‘currency’?
Apr 1, 2025 9:12 PM

Pope Francis intelligently realizes that Christ, our model for winning the hearts and good will of others, was a tender listener who carefully and constantly invested his gentle concern and advice in others. The return on such investment paid off as the poor and suffering sinners who listened to him – and still do through his vicars on earth – were converted by the tender Lamb of God.

Read More…

On March 18, in a meeting with representatives from the Camillan Charismatic Family of healthcare operators, Pope Francis said that Christianity simply “does not work” without practicing tenderness. He said tenderness is a virtue so little exercised in our charitable “encounters” with the sick, poor and suffering that it “risks being dropped from the dictionary” of our everyday language.

“We must take it up again and put it into practice anew. Christianity without tenderness does not work,” the pope said. “Tenderness is a properly Christian attitude: it is also the very marrow of our encounter with people who suffer,” the pope said.

To be tender (from the Latin “tener” and old French “tendre”) means reaching out, listening and eventually helping others “in gentle, soft way”. Hence, virtuous persons who excel in tenderness develop a “soft touch” for those who are suffering. They naturally, then, passion while delicately addressing problems of the suffering.

In English, we also use the word “tender”, perhaps bizarrely so, in connection with financial and business transactions, as in “to tender bids” for projects and “legal tender” to spend on cash acquisitions.

Is there a way in which the spirit, human virtue and business dealings unite in a unique semantical use of the word “tender”?

Reading some of the more quirky moral-spiritual literature this Lent, I came across analogous expressions of dealing with persons’ dignity in terms of a making a carefully considered “investment” in them. This is to say, in dealing with and eventually helping uplift our neighbors’ lives out of injustice, our moral courage to persevere with and listen to the afflicted as well as to give gentle advice “pays dividends”. What’s more, this charitable interaction es a form of “currency”. It affords others who receive just spiritual payment and healing to “pay back” or “pay forward” the tender generosity received empathetically to others who suffer. The so-called “spiritual currency” might even be paid back to the person who originally gave his tender support when it is his time to be the sufferer.

Indeed, though it may seem vulgar to connect transactional and investment terminology to true acts of self-less charity – a theological virtue that requires God’s abundant grace – I am ever the more convinced that there is real value in relating the economic and virtue/spiritual meanings.

For example, if we treat others we help as mere objects of our sympathy, then strictly speaking no charitable interaction occurs between the benefactor and the recipient. It may do good to the other, but it is not the self-less love that is charity. However, if we treat the needy and suffering in a service-orientated capacity – which we find so prevalent in market exchange economies – and in the way morally scrupulous business persons carefully invest their legal tender in worthy protagonists of their cooperative venture, then this economic meaning is much closer to the affective solidarity and tenderness that Pope Francis says is so vital to a loving Christian life.

In the latter example, the poor and suffering are raised to dignified levels of respectful partnership and are truly served by persons who are genuinely concerned about their well-being and improvement. In the former case, the poor are merely used to make ourselves feel good, with our sentiments being gratified in and of themselves.

Pope Francis intelligently realizes Christ is our model for winning the hearts and good will of others, since he is a most tender listener who carefully invests his soft touch in others. The return on the spiritual investment paid off manifold: poor and suffering sinners to whom he listened were eventually converted and became loyal followers of the tender Lamb of God. 2000 years on, Christian believers from all over the world are still paying this “spiritual currency” forward while evangelizing God’s love and winning hearts for Him.

Photo credit (courtesy of Paul Haring/CNS)

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Acton Commentary: Hollywood’s Radical Che Chic
Was the real Che Guevara a lover of “humanity, justice and truth”? In mentary today, Bruce Edward Walker reviews Steven Soderbergh’s new four-hour “Che” film epic and discovers “a cinematic paean to one of the twentieth-century’s most infamous butchers.” Read the mentary at the Acton Institute website. ...
Dr. Andrew Abela Receives 2009 Novak Award
Maltese-American marketing professor, Dr. Andrew Abela, is the winner of the Acton Institute’s 2009 Novak Award. Dr. Abela’s main research areas include consumerism, marketing ethics, Catholic Social Teaching, and internal munication. Believing that anti-free market perspectives seem to dominate discussion about the social impact of business, Dr. Abela is working to explore Christian ethics further to show how these issues can be resolved more humanely and effectively through market-oriented approaches. To aid this work, Dr. Abela is currently preparing a...
Acton Commentary: The Moral Bankruptcy Behind the Bailouts
Amid the Washington clamor for more and bigger bailouts, a few brave voices among elected officials and government veterans are being raised about the moral disaster looming behind massive government spending programs. If we ignore these warnings, writes Ray Nothstine in today’s Acton Commentary, we may be “continuing down a path that may usher in an ever greater financial crisis.” Read the mentary here and share ments below. ...
More on ‘The Moral Bankruptcy Behind the Bailouts’
“Government budgets are moral documents,” is the often quoted line from Jim Wallis of Sojourners and other religious left leaders. Wallis also adds that “When politicians present their budgets, they are really presenting their priorities.” There is perhaps no better example of a spending bill lacking moral soundness than the current stimulus package being debated in the U.S. Senate. In mentary this week, “The Moral Bankruptcy Behind the Bailouts,” I offer clear reasons how spending more does not equate to...
PBR: History Casts Doubt
In response to the question, “What is wrong with socialism?” I can hardly do better than Pope John Paul II, who wrote in Centesimus Annus, “the fundamental error of socialism is anthropological in nature,” because socialism maintains, “that the good of the individual can be realized without reference to his free choice.” The socialist experiment is attractive because its model is the family, a situation in which each gives according to his ability and receives according to his need—and it...
Vatican Condemnation of anti-Semitism Unchanged Despite Misstep on Holocaust Denier
The pope has certainly earned his salary this week. In his attempt to heal a schism, he inadvertently set off a fire storm. As most everyone knows by now, the pontiff lifted the munication of four bishops illicitly ordained by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefevbre in 1988, whose dissent from the Second Vatican Council drew a small but fervent following. One of these bishops, Richard Williamson, is a holocaust denier. To understand the saga, it is necessary to peel back...
PBR: The Faith-Based Initiative
Last week’s National Prayer Breakfast featured a speech by President Obama which was his most substantive address concerning the future of the faith-based initiative since his Zanesville, Ohio speech of July 2008. In the Zanesville speech, then-candidate Obama discussed “expansion” of the faith-based initiative, and some details were added as Obama announced his vision for the newly-named Office for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. The announced priorities of the office are fourfold: The Office’s top priority will be munity groups an...
PBR: Monsma and Carlton-Thies Speak Out
In response to the question, “What is the future of the faith-based initiative?” As part of Christianity Today’s Speaking Out (web-only) feature, Stephen V. Monsma and Stanley Carlson-Thies, of Calvin College’s Henry Institute and the Center for Public Justice respectively, address the future of the faith-based initiative under President Obama. Monsma and Carlton-Thies outline five “encouraging signs” and one “major concern.” The encouraging signs include the naming of the office executive director (Joshua DuBois) and advisory council (including “recognized evangelicals”...
PBR: Socialism Tyrannizes
In response to the question, “What is wrong with socialism?” In answering this question we could point to the historical instances of socialist regimes and their abhorrent record on treatment of human beings. But the supporters of socialism might just as well argue that these examples are not truly relevant because each historical instance of socialism has particular contextual corruptions. Thus, these regimes have never really manifested the ideal that socialism offers. So on a more abstract or ideal level,...
Of Men, Mountains, and Mining
Here’s a brief report from The Environmental Report on mountain-top removal mining, and the increasing involvement of religious groups weighing in on the question. One of these groups is Christians for the Mountains. A quote by the group’s co-founder Allen Johnson was noteworthy, “We cannot destroy God’s creation in order to have a temporal economy.” One other thing that struck me about the interview is that the AmeriCorp involvement smacks of “rebranding” secular environmentalism. Add the magic words “creation care”...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved