“God Doesn’t Want You to Be Miserable.”

Today’s reflection is from guest contributor Kori Pacyniak (they/them), a queer, nonbinary, and trans Catholic, who is a PhD candidate at the University of California Riverside. They are presently completing a dissertation titled, “Sacred Bodies, Sacred Lives: Trans Catholic Joy, Resistance, and Liberation” about the lived religious experiences of trans Catholics. Ordained as a priest through Roman Catholic Womenpriests, Kori currently focuses on creating sacred space and liturgy by and for queer and trans Catholics.

Today’s liturgical readings for the 5th Sunday of Ordinary Time can be found here.

Today’s first liturgical reading recounting Job’s lament because of his suffering might hit a bit too close to home for some of us, especially in an election year and a week after the Ohio Senate overrode the governor’s veto of an anti-trans healthcare bill. Many of us have probably shared Job’s hopelessness at some point. Yet our readings pair this passage from Job with a psalm praising God and a second reading and a gospel passage exhorting our obligation and purpose to preach.

What does it mean to have an obligation or purpose to preach the good news? Are we under the same obligation that Paul and Jesus were? I imagine most of us are not called to be itinerant preachers, traveling from city to city and preaching the gospel from pulpits and street corners. Instead of thinking about preaching solely in terms of what happens in churches or  “preachers” who protest Pride marches, what if we thought about how our lives can witness to the good news and glory of God as a form of preaching?

Here I could insert the oft-quoted “Preach the gospel. If necessary, use words” that is attributed (rightly or wrongly) to St. Francis of Assisi. I might also throw in, “Live your life so that the Westboro Baptist Church would protest your funeral.” Each of us has a unique vocation, but we are all called to the way of Jesus, to sharing and living out the good news.

This form of preaching means living into the fullness of my identity as a Catholic and as a trans and nonbinary queer person. I’ll admit that I probably think about gender and sexuality more than most people. I have spent years trying to discern what words (if any) adequately represent who I am and how I exist in this world. My trans narrative isn’t one of being born in the wrong body, but I still spent years trying to be who I thought other people wanted me to be. Trying to force myself into labels and boxes that weren’t mine.

Through all those years, those troubled nights and miserable days when, like Job, I thought there wasn’t any hope for a future, God never stopped loving me. Even when I felt so alone because I didn’t know any other trans Catholics, when I felt that society was making me choose between being Catholic and being queer and trans, God was there with me. Like many trans folks, there were days (and nights) when I wondered if the struggle was worth it. But in the most hopeless of those moments, there was always this little voice in my head and in my heart, reminding me not to lose hope and to have faith and persevere.

Hiding who we are – whether it’s our gender or our sexuality – usually does not last forever. When I feel like hiding, I go back to something a priest said to me when I was struggling with my gender. “God doesn’t want you to be miserable.” Such simple words, and yet they helped me realize that God didn’t have a problem with me being trans or queer. I, like everyone, was made in the image of God, and God cannot be contained by traditional Western understandings of the gender binary. God is so much more than that.

When we go through the trouble of discerning who we are, whom we love, how we understand ourselves, it would be a shame to hide that away. Our diverse bodies, genders, sexualities are a reflection of God’s infinite and amazing diversity. To live our lives authentically, being true to ourselves and God who made us in God’s own image is our purpose. What better way to preach God’s love than to live into who God created us to be?

An Invitation to Participate in Research

As part of Kori’s dissertation, about which they explain more here, Kori is conducting interviews with trans Catholics (anyone who identifies as trans, nonbinary, genderqueer, agender, gender non-conforming, etc and has identified as Catholic at any point in time) to explore the community’s lived religious experiences, focusing on themes of joy, resistance, and liberation, while working to construct a trans affirming and liberatory religious ethic based in Catholic social justice. To learn more about the project or participate in it, click here.

-—Kori Pacyniak (they/them), February 4, 2024