Nearly 17 years ago, my heart was changed forever.
It was the instant I became a mother for the first time. When my newborn daughter was placed on my chest just moments after birth, tenderness threatened to burst my heart with an intensity that was new to me.
With this intense tenderness came the realization that this tiny person depended solely on me to live. My newborn was the embodiment of pure humility.
Humility is key
God knew that humility is the key to entering our human hearts and changing them forever. Perhaps that’s why He humbled Himself and came to us on Earth as a baby, why He humbled Himself in sacrifice on the Cross for us, why He humbles Himself under the appearance of bread and wine in the Eucharist at every Mass across the world.
It’s so that we might hold Him like a mother holds her newborn, take Him into ourselves at the Eucharist, and, finding Him in the depths of our own hearts, treasure Him there with a newfound tenderness forever.
What unfathomable love God has for us for Him to come to us in such humility.
“Christ does not offer up His humanity glorified as it is in Heaven, but in the lowly form under which it is upon the altar. The Angels in Heaven tremble before the glorified humanity of Jesus Christ, and they are lost in amazement when they behold the abasement of this same humanity upon our altars,” said Fr. Martin von Cochem in The Incredible Catholic Mass.
“Here it lies hidden — imprisoned, as it were — under the species of bread and wine . . . Under so small, so humble, so lowly a form does Christ present Himself to the ever-blessed Trinity, offering Himself up in a manner which inspires all the heavenly host with profound admiration.”
Holding the Son of God
This Advent, as we prepare our hearts for the coming of the newborn Christ child, I look to the images I have in my kitchen of Our Blessed Mother holding Jesus. One can imagine the enormity of what Our Blessed Mother must have held in her heart: the knowledge that she is holding the Son of God, while also facing the motherly duties of caring for Him as an Infant here on Earth.
There is one image in particular that always resonates with me: the young dark-haired Mary holds the beautiful Baby wrapped in white cloth close to her heart and places a tender kiss on His cheek.
This is the tenderness, the intimacy we can cultivate in our own hearts for the Christ child, who came to us not just more than 2,000 years ago but continues to come to us every day in the Eucharist.
Cultivating tenderness
How can we cultivate this tenderness for Him when we ourselves never held Him as a baby, never touched His robe, heard His words, nor stood at His feet on the Cross?
First, we can see Him in each person in our own lives and treat them as such. Second, we can strive to approach Him as a child as well, opening our hearts to Him with innocence and tenderness as we receive Him in the Eucharist.
One practice to this end is simply touching the foot of the crucifix in the morning, emptying your cares there, offering your day to Him, and asking for the grace to shoulder those cares. This does over time foster a tenderness, a dependency as a child as you come to Him in utter humility and openness with nothing to hide.
When I’ve made the connection between the beautiful Christ child in the manger and in His Mother’s arms — the humility with which He came to us as a child and continues to come to us in the Eucharist to this day — and the tremendous sacrifice He made for me on the Cross so that I might have the chance to get to Heaven, my heart melts at the realization of the love He has for me, the great sacrifice He made and continues to make, and the intimacy He strives to have with each of us.
Embracing humility
Cultivating tenderness in our relationship with God involves striving to comprehend both His humility and sacrifice at the same time, plus imitating His humility by coming to Him as a child dependent on Him for all things.
Just as Our Blessed Mother held the Son of God so lovingly in her arms — her heart bursting with newfound tenderness for Him — so too can we hold Him so tenderly in our hearts as we receive Him in the Eucharist.
Cultivating that tenderness by embracing humility before God is key.
Julianne Nornberg, mother of four children, is a teacher’s aide at St. John the Baptist School in Waunakee.