Trans Day of Visibility Makes Visible God’s Abiding Love for ALL

Today is the International Transgender Day of Visibility, which celebrates trans people and raises awareness of their lives.  Today’s post is by Phoebe Carstens, a regular contributor to Bondings 2.0.

It was during a period of imaginative prayer, years ago, that I finalized my decision to physically transition. Engaged in a year-long adaptation of the Spiritual Exercises, I had taken to letting my imagination wander in the company of God. On this particular day, I saw myself standing on the bank of a wide, pleasant river facing Jesus, who stood in the middle of it.

I recognized myself, yet I appeared quite different in my imagined prayer than what I had currently looked like. My face, reflected in the water, was more defined. My voice, when I called out a greeting to Jesus, was deeper. And my chest–as bare in the warm sunshine as Jesus’ chest–was flatter. I remember how it felt to see myself standing there, entirely without shame, or burden, or anxiety. I felt as free as the river, as warm as the sun. I was seeing myself as I only ever saw myself in my imagination, when I was praying. I was seeing myself–I was beginning to feel assured–how I truly was in God’s eyes. 

Jesus didn’t exchange many words with me during that prayer, but I remember his delighted laugh and his beautiful smile as he spread out his arms, beckoning me. As if to say– well, here we are! You can have it if you want–here is joy, here is peace, here is finally coming home to yourself. Come join me in the water: here, you can be who you are. 

I resolved the next day to tell my parents I wanted to start hormone replacement therapy and eventually pursue top surgery. 

At that time, I wasn’t aware of any other transgender Catholics. I imagined–hoped–they must be out there somewhere. I thought often of one of my mentors at school, an older gay Catholic man, with whom I would talk about being gay and Catholic. He once said to me, wistful yet confident, “We have always been here, in the Church, since the very beginning.”

And so I had to believe that somehow, somewhere, there were others like me in the Church, other trans people who were the Church, carrying on a legacy of witness “since the very beginning.”

It ended up taking a few years to find names and faces to put to that imagined hope, to see trans people openly and proudly declaring themselves to be who they are within the Church. It has taken me years, too, to feel confident enough to do the same. That is what visibility can do: it tells us that we are not alone and that we are not “outside,” isolated and without a he. 

We trans people are here in this Church. We are undeniably here, in theology school classrooms and Catholic schools and parish pews and choir stalls. We are here, proclaiming the word of God on Sundays and singing God’s praises and distributing his Body and Blood. We are listening to God’s voice, we are heeding God’s call. Despite proclamations and policies and documents and executive orders and voices that seek to tell us to hide ourselves, bury ourselves, and erase ourselves—God’s voice is louder, and God’s voice tells us that we belong. 

Trans Day of Visibility makes visible God’s abiding love for God’s beautiful, surprising, playful, ever-unfolding Creation. It makes visible a God who is found as the deepest center of ourselves, who calls us to explore and imagine and surrender to awe. It makes visible the holy lives of transgender people past and present, and enlightens the path of trans saints still to come. It makes visible the horrible injustices of violence, ridicule, and erasure. It makes visible the need for justice and mercy and genuine encounter. It makes visible the joy of being a transgender child of God. 

On this Trans Day of Visibility, I pray that we all might be open to a God who makes visible to us the deepest truth of our identity: that we are loved, that we are beautiful, and that we are called, joyfully, to be who we are. 

–Phoebe Carstens, New Ways Ministry, March 31, 2025