Treasures Hidden in LGBTQ+ Lives

Today’s post is from guest contributor Sr. Luisa Derouen. Sr. Luisa is a Dominican Sister of Peace who began to minister among the transgender community in 1999 and has been a spiritual companion formally and informally to about 250 transgender people across the country. She is now semiretired at the St. Catharine Motherhouse in central Kentucky.

Today’s liturgical readings for the 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time can be found here.

For as long as I can remember, today’s Gospel reading, the parable of the treasure in the field, has been my choice for the Gospel to be proclaimed at my funeral. I entered my Dominican Sisters’ religious community right out of high school in 1961. I didn’t enter religious life for ministry or community. I entered because I had “found” the treasure that is God, and my whole life has been about selling all so that I can attain that treasure. My religious life has always been a treasured, totally underserved gift that I have never taken for granted, and which grows more precious as I approach my 62^nd year as a Dominican sister.

Stories of hidden caches of precious objects would have been very familiar to those listening to Jesus describe the reign of God as a hidden treasure. He would have had in mind a jar of coins or jewels. Palestine had been invaded many times over the centuries because of its position between Mesopotamia and Egypt, so it was common for people to bury their valuables. Hidden treasure was a favorite theme in their folklore, but as was usually the case, Jesus didn’t tell the tale with an obvious happy ending that people expected.

We’re most accustomed to interpreting the images of the treasure in the field and the pearl of great price as the demand Jesus makes of us for complete self-surrender in order to claim the treasure that is God. Sacrifice first, and then you are rewarded. But we know that’s really not how it works.

What’s most important in this parable is not what the two hypothetical characters give up, but why they do so: because of the overwhelming experience of the splendor of their discovery. The experience of finding the treasure and the pearl compelled them to self-surrender and sell all.

That has always resonated deeply with me because as a young teenager in public school, I tasted the goodness of God in a way that has been operative my entire life. And since then, as much as I have been able, I have strived to pay the price for the exquisite gift of the love of God.

I’d like to share two brief comments about today’s gospel reading with those of you who are the LGBTQ+ Body of Christ in our Church today.

First, if you are reading this reflection on the Gospel for the Seventeenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, then you, too, have likely found the treasure that is God—in ways that you could never have planned or prepared for, much less earned. Sadly, many of you pay a high price for your faithful response to the treasure you have found—God’s choice of you as Beloved. In spite of the way you are often treated in your church, you remain faithful to God who dwells in you and lures you to an ever-deepening relationship.

The presence of God is the treasure hidden in the field of your own life. Your fidelity to that relationship with God in the Catholic Church has likely required of you a high price that is not God’s desire for you. You continue to seek and find God in a Church that often misunderstands you, or outright rejects you, but you continue to plow the field and sell all for the treasure that is God.

Second, God’s love for you and in you means that you a precious treasure as well.  You are God’s holy dwelling place. Though our Church has often ignored your goodness and gifts, you remain faithful in challenging ways that many of us have never experienced.

I, and we all, need your buried treasures.

—Sr. Luisa Derouen, July 30, 2023