Finding the Divine Spark Within to Heal Us and the World

Hugh Smeltekop

Today’s scriptural reflection is by guest contributor Hugh Smeltekop (he/him), a researcher of queer experience in Catholic higher education and an educator at the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota). He has previously served as vice director and director general for a rural campus of the Universidad Católica Boliviana, and earned his EdD in 2024.

Today’s liturgical readings for the Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time can be found by clicking here. 

Today’s gospel reading from Matthew is sometimes called the Commissioning. Jesus gives his disciples authority to drive out unclean spirits and cure illness, and sends them out, reminding them: “Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.”

Though the text says Jesus gave his disciples authority, I suspect that instead of transferring something into them, he instead revealed the divine presence they had in them. That is the what they have received without cost. It was there all along. And not only for the disciples: we also already contain the Holy. 

There are traces of this concept throughout the Bible. Genesis tells us that we are made in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:27). Jesus tells the Pharisees that the Kingdom of God is already among us (Luke 17:20-21). And Paul reminds us in First Corinthians that the spirit of God dwells in us (1 Corinthians 3:16). We already contain the essence of God in us.

In a Church sometimes focused too much on sin, we are not always reminded of that essence of God in each of us. As queer people, the reminders come even more infrequently, and too often we receive the opposite. In fact, I feel like the Church seems somewhat obsessed with my sexuality at times. A priest I worked with closely came into my office once and shared that he prayed for me so that I might be cured of my ‘disease of same sex attraction.’ I felt sad and discouraged that in his eyes I was reduced to a supposed pathology, in need of his pity and prayers. My friend Bill was fired from his music ministry in the Church for marrying his husband. The experience left him angry and disconsolate, questioning whether there was room for him in a Church he had served faithfully. Who among us has not experienced this kind of judgment, or worse?

Where do we find this affirmation of the spirit of God within us? One place is in the life and writings of the 13th century German mystic Meister Eckhart, in which he speaks of the Divine Spark. Meister Eckhart helps us understand God not primarily through rational thought, but rather through letting go of the ways culture pushes us to understand the self and the cultural system in which the self is embedded. We should instead let go of our concept of self and embrace emptiness. In embracing emptiness, we learn to transcend the world as it is and find a space more aligned with God’s promise and example of love. For me, this practice meant releasing the Church’s narrative that my love was disordered. In that space of letting go, I discovered not absence but presence—the Divine Spark waiting to be recognized.

I count many queer people as mystics and prophets who are similar to Meister Eckhart. We queers are especially attuned to prophetic experience because we are forced to find space outside of our culture’s boundaries. We look inward because the world does not make space for us. We are forced to let go of cultural expectations because they do not square with our knowledge of ourselves. 

In letting go, we are left to redefine our lives in concert with the Divine Spark, and transcend what we were taught. Acclaimed poet Andrea Gibson in their poem “Your Life” gives voice to this reality:

Your name is not a song you will sing under your breath.

Your pronouns haven’t even been invented yet.

You’re going to shave your head and drive through Texas.

You’re going to kill your own god so you can fall in love for the first time.

Who better than a people forced to transcend our people’s rules about things.

In killing that small-g god—the one constructed from misaligned expectations and harsh judgments—Gibson’s ‘You’ makes space for a self aligned with the Divine Spark to emerge, free to fall in love for the first time: with themselves, with another, with God as God truly is.

In today’s gospel passage, Jesus gives his disciples authority to drive out unclean spirits and cure illness. How much of that illness was psychological distress and unrest that comes from the stigma that cultural and religious norms place on people for failing to conform? And how powerful to be commissioned to free others, free them to transcend arbitrary rules that prevent people from seeing the Divine Spark in themselves.

This is also our calling. There is room in our Church for truths still to be revealed, revealed by mystics and prophets like Meister Eckhart and Andrea Gibson. As followers of Christ, we are also commissioned by Him to point the world toward love, to heal the folks in our communities by helping them recognize the Divine Sparks in them. 

For queer Catholics, this work can take many paths: creating inclusive faith communities, accompanying young queer people on their faith journeys, challenging homophobic theology through our witness, building bridges between LGBTQ+ organizations and parishes, and much more. In doing so, we fulfill Christ’s commission: we give without cost what we have received without cost—the recognition of the Divine Spark that heals and transforms, the love that makes all things new.

—Hugh Smeltekop, June 14, 2026