How Are We To Live By Faith In Such a Trying Time as Ours?

Abi Peralta

Today’s reflection is from Abigail Peralta, a transgender Catholic and parishioner at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Washington, DC, where they are active in the Young Adult Community and the LGBTQIA+ ministry. These reflections are drawn from personal experience and reflect the author’s personal views only.

Today’s liturgical readings for the Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time can be found here.

Today’s liturgical readings were not easy for me to pray with. In the first reading, the prophet Habakkuk cries out, questioning how a holy and eternal God could allow evil and suffering to persist, and God’s answer feels like a challenge to the already suffering: to wait, to trust, that “the righteous shall live by his faith.” 

In the Gospel passage, Jesus seems to challenge us further, commanding us to say, “We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.”

Like Habakkuk, it feels fair to recoil from such words. As a transgender Catholic, I am painfully aware that many in the church harshly phrase the call to LGBTQIA+ Catholics “to live by faith,” as though demanding passive resignation and to deny our identities. These admonitions are often justified by false accusations—sometimes even from the pulpit— that LGBTQIA+ people are threats to families, to the church, to the very fabric of society. Repeating these lies can make them stick in people’s minds, putting our God-given dignity and our very lives in danger.

These dangers are not abstract. In the first nine months of this year, we in the U.S. have witnessed an erosion of social and political norms, and a growing disregard for human dignity in the treatment of the poor, the unhoused, migrants, refugees, and LGBTQIA+ people. 

On a personal level, it has been nauseating to watch issues affecting transgender people thrust front and center, debated in ways that strip away our humanity, and even discussed in the context of rising gun violence. I do believe that crying out against injustice, as Habakkuk does, is a proper response. 

Alfred Delp, a Jesuit priest whose prison writings have helped me make sense of this year, knew this feeling very well. Fr. Delp was falsely accused of conspiring against the Nazi regime, condemned in a sham trial, and executed. While awaiting execution in his cell, he reminded us that we must retain the ability to react to injustice, writing: 

“The great question to us is whether we are still capable of being truly shocked – or whether we will continue to see thousands of things that we know should not be and must not be and yet remain hardened to them.”

But  recoiling from evil is not enough. Today’s readings remind us also to be open to God. The responsorial psalm warns: “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” Even the hearts of the Israelites who witnessed God’s mighty works when He brought them out of Egypt were tempted to faithlessness, and the warning is for us as well. Though we despair over continued evil and suffering, we are called to live by faith, recognizing that the hand of God is at work even amid injustice.

The question is: how are we to live by faith in such a trying time as ours? Paul’s letter to Timothy reminds us that keeping the faith is not passive resignation. Rather, it is an active stance—fanning into flame the gifts God has already given us of power, love, and self-control—which enables us to persevere amid difficulty. Paul emphasizes that we are to bear our hardships “with the strength that comes from God,” not on our own. And that, I think, is key. 

We should understand Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel not as a harsh or demanding instruction for long-suffering people, but as an invitation to trust and have a humble faith, even if that faith is only the size of a mustard seed. Calling ourselves “unprofitable servants” does not have to diminish our dignity. It can be a deliberate posture of humility before God. James tells us that humility clears the way for God’s grace to work in us (Jas 4:5-10). That grace empowers us to respond to God in faith through sacrificial acts of mercy: serving those in need, interceding for those who have asked for our prayers, and lifting up those who have no one to pray for them.

I offer one small practice that has helped me live this out. Earlier this year, after Mass, I had drawn the Sacred Heart image from a deck of saint cards. The stranger who gave it to me said: “Whenever you pray, think of the person you find most difficult to love, and pray for them. And see what God will do in your heart.” I tried this, and it was incredibly difficult. I found myself often thinking of those who marginalize the LGBTQIA+ community or who have actively worked to strip away medical care from transgender people, and thinking to myself: “No way.” I eventually realized that only God can truly love them and will their good, so the only way that I can pray for them is by admitting my limitations and seeking God’s assistance.  

Each of us in the LGBTQIA+ community struggles differently, but offering even our hardest feelings can open the way for God’s grace to transform our hearts. The stranger was right: this practice has been gradually transforming me, somehow making it easier for me to notice those in greater need than myself and to desire to serve generously. And this is not passive resignation. It is a deliberate act based on faith that God is just, that in the end He will right every wrong, and that His promises are true.  

As Alfred Delp writes:

“God’s promises are always before us; they are more constant than the stars, more effective than the sun; they heal us and set us free. They transform us and widen the compass of our existence to infinity. In the face of the promises, even grief loses its bitterness; trouble discloses inner courage and in loneliness is sown the seed of trust.”

May we continue to place our faith in God and allow His grace to guide us in loving and serving others.

—Abi Peralta, October 5, 2025