Ave Explores Series | Mary | Week 2

A Tender Strength

by Timothy P. O’Malley

Along the way to adolescence, men learn that tenderness is not a virtue appropriate to those seeking to become “masculine.” A man is someone who cultivates power and strength—the kind of virtues appropriate to the manliest of men. Tenderness calls to mind delicateness, daintiness, a femininity that no man should cultivate—at least if he wants to find friends in the locker room.

This assumption about tenderness has creeped into ecclesial circles too. Catholic literature for adolescent men (and even older men) speak of strength, a valiant exercise of courage. Terms like “tender” are employed almost entirely for women.

For this reason, much of this literature tends to see the Blessed Virgin Mary as the tender mother of God, an icon for women alone. Of course, Mary was a woman. She can nurture a child within the womb, give birth, and nourish the babe at her breast. Mary is the one who is tender, wanting the entire human family to enter into a relationship with her beloved son, Jesus. As we hear in the Salve Regina, Mary is the clement, devoted, and sweet mother of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Icons depict this with Mary placing her head on the infant Christ.

Mary’s tenderness is not the problem. She is tender. The problem is the presumption that tenderness is a weakness rather than a strength. The problem is the assumption that tenderness is a virtue of women, not of men.

This assumption makes sense in our fallen world. After all, after the fall, it is the powerful who gain strength. Politicians are not described as tender but powerful. Sports stars are icons of athletic excellence and not tender parents to children. What matters is a public persona that exudes strength rather than that most nauseating of private virtues—the tender love of a parent for a child or the tender care of a child to an aging parent. Tenderness is for the weak.

At least that’s the lie that we all believe after the fall. In a world where Jesus Christ has come, the tenderness of the Blessed Virgin Mary is not a sign of weakness. It’s not even a feature of women alone. It’s a virtue meant to be shared by men and women alike.

Tenderness, after all, is a habit or disposition to reach out to care for those most in need. The Word was made flesh, revealing to us that God has not been made manifest through power and prestige, but through the tender love of mother and son. Self-giving love is central to the Christian life.

In this sense, men and women alike look to the Blessed Virgin Mary as an icon of tenderness. She does not seize power or ask for total control, but tenderly places her head upon her son. She reaches out, caring for the vulnerable flesh of her beloved son, Jesus.

This attention to vulnerability is something that we must cultivate in young men. Too many of these young men have been formed to think that vulnerability is weakness. They take up a posture of power in high school and college, coming to define themselves as one unaffected by the plight of the vulnerable. These same men don’t recognize the gift of fatherhood, presuming falsely that “being a dad” is a sign of weakness.

Both youth and young adult ministers must counteract this fallen assumption that tenderness is weakness. In the Blessed Virgin Mary we encounter a tenderness that is strength, a willingness to open one’s heart to love the beloved Son even if that love eventually leads to hold her beloved and now dead son in her arms.

Ministry to young men must cease proclaiming a faux-Gospel of strength and valiant courage alone. Rather in gazing at the Blessed Virgin Mary, every man and woman alike is to take up a posture of tenderness.

After all, Mary reveals the tender love of a God who has become flesh, who dwelt among us, who healed and cared for the sinners and the sick, who died on the cross, and was raised from the dead.

Such tenderness is not only a nice, pleasant virtue. It’s the very pedagogy of God who loved the human family even unto the end.

Download this article as a PDF here.

Timothy P. O’Malley is a Catholic theologian, author, speaker, and managing director of the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of three books, including Off the Hook, Bored Again Catholic and Liturgy and the New Evangelization.

Based on Your Reading

Mary Is There During Our Grief by Leticia Ochoa Adams	Hail, Queen of Peace by Katie Prejean McGrady	Opening the Door to Mary by Rev. James Phalan, C.S.C.	Why Mary Matters by Sonja Corbitt