During this last week, at his general audience, Pope Francis met with his fourth group of ‘Trans guests’. These were offered refuge by the Catholic Church in Rome. L’Osservatore Romano reported how this had given the guests hope.

Father Conocchia, who had organised this meeting, spoke about the Church’s interaction with his guests in a later interview. 

“I would say that we treat these [transgender] people as if they were invisible…If the coronavirus had never happened, I might have never met them in person, they might have never asked for help in a church and maybe we wouldn’t have had the chance to dialogue, know each other and share.”

Much of the language that describes the virtue in this mutual encounter is presented in terms of ‘encounter and accompaniment.’ And as a first stage of understanding a pastoral encounter, that it productive and heart-warming. But there should be more, and the Feast of the Assumption, lying only a few days away from the encounter Fr Connochia arranged,  offers a clue to what that might be.

We are told that it was, understandably, a great joy for the guests to meet Pope Francis. Inspirational and compassionate as the Holy Father is, there is also joy to be had in the encounter with  Mary as well; for our Lady has much to offer those affected by the wounds that gender dysphoria inflicts.

The Feast of her Assumption directs the gaze of the Church to what Mary has to offer a wounded humanity.

At the outset of her journey was the moment of surrender and trust articulated in the response “Let it be to me according to His will.”

Whatever complex factors drive the dreadful experience of gender dysphoria where mind and body are so destructively pitted against each other, one element at least is the refusal or inability of the mind to submit to the givenness of the body’s biology.

The explosion in the numbers of those caught up the turmoil of  the trans affliction from what was restricted only recently to 0.01% of the population,  suggests that changing one’s gender may have begun to appeal to greater numbers of the confused young, as a solution to the experience of an inner refusal to accept what one has been born as.

Mary acts as a signpost that points away from gender and biology as determinative of our core identity. She shifts our gaze away from the centrality of our own will and the resonances of our biology, to the will of our creator and the amplification of the murmuring of the soul.

Mary stands at the crossroads where secular society and the Catholic Church part company because they take different directions. Both ways forward involve the search for a transitioning. The secular invocation of ‘trans’  restricts itself to the surgical and hormonal altering of the biological given. The Churches invocation of ‘trans’ enters a new dimension of being where the will is surrendered and the heart soul and roots of desire are transformed. 

“Let it be to me according to your will” is the articulation of the beginning of  the movement from the clenched fist of resentment and rebellion, against society, God, the biological self, and unwelcome imposed societal expectations into the opening of the palms in prayer, submission and expectation, that allows a transition from body to soul, and from autonomy to rescue.

The Church should not leave the prefix ‘trans’ to the exclusive use of progressive ideology. Christianity should perhaps be explaining itself as the ultimate ‘trans’ movement.

The coming of God into the human heart, a process  that was unlocked by Mary’s ‘fiat’ of submission, marks the beginning of a journey where there is a transition from despair to hope, from alienation to absolution, from the old to the new.

So many of the secular solutions that are held out as promising relief to the human condition are predicated upon a change in external circumstances producing a lasting change. But the reconciliation of expectations and aspirations born of human discontent is not so easily achieved. Changing the outer circumstances of who we are is no guarantee of a change at a deeper level, where most of our pain is to found.

The journey inwards, is what Christianity specialises in.

The ‘trans’ dynamic as a foundational dynamic of the Kingdom in Christianity is marked by St John at the beginning of his Gospel. To invoke Mary is to initiate an experience of transformation,. St John sets out what can be expected from Jesus when Mary’s role is understood. The transformation of water into wine at the wedding in Cana, promises and prefigures the transformation of the human condition. It will set up a pattern of change that will be recognised in the ‘trans’ dynamic that characterises Catholic perception almost more than any other, the recognition of transubstantiation in the Mass.

The Feast of the Assumption itself contains the another ‘trans’ initiative as our Lady makes the transition from this world to the next, not by the mechanism of death, but by being assumed into heaven. The Assumption as a Feast offers a recalibration of the assumption that  biology always prevails. It is the Holy Spirit that provides the ultimate determinative dynamic, not biology.  Mary’s trust, obedience and immaculate conception loosens both the metaphysical and physical  prioritization of body over spirit.

It is certainly true that the compassion of Jesus expressed itself in his walking alongside the wounded and the outcast during the three years of his messianic mission. 

But this was a characteristic of his encounters before the resurrection. In its longing to expression the compassion of Jesus during his earthly ministry, the Church will want to remember the impact the risen Christ has on his followers after the resurrection. 

This was where ‘accompaniment and recognition’ gave way to a transformation that flowed from repentance and conversion.

The Osservatore Romani will have notified  the watching world that the  ‘hope’ that an audience with the pope brings to the troubled was welcome and effective. But the Church will want to go further at this Feast of the Assumption and inform the world that its experience and mediation of hope contains ‘trans’ elements  that are more effectively life-changing than gender reassignment can offer. 

The compassionate offer of recognition and inclusion for those who feel themselves to be invisible and outcast will always be important. But more powerful than that, embedded in the celebration of the Feast of the Assumption, is the promise of a deeper absolution and transformation for any who, following Mary, make the act of surrender to the will of God, and embark on a journey of humility and trust that she exemplified beyond all others.

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