To the Parents of Transgender Children
Because God Loves Your Children Too Much
Dear parents of transgender children, it is not that the Church doesn’t love your children nor does the Church say that God doesn’t love them. But the Church loves your children more, and God’s love for them is too deep for any human being to ever understand.
Your children are God’s children, whatever sex they may have, and whatever life they may choose to live.
But God, being the Good Father, the Most Loving Father of them all, wants only the best for your children. He cares for them too much to remain silent, to not let them know that there is a better way. That they have an identity that is far better than the one the world currently has in mind.
God cannot remain silent, and so He speaks through His Church. The Church speaks even if it may sound self-righteous. Even if it may be condemned by the world and judged as being hypocritical and hateful and without compassion.
For isn’t this what love is all about? Every parent knows all too well to speak to their children to keep them from hurting themselves, even if it means being on the receiving end of their anger. You know too well how much you love them, but they do not always know, nor would they ever know what it means.
It is the same with God.
God is not content on being a mere force of tolerance, but a blazing fire of the fiercest and purest kind of love. And it is the same love that He has for your children.
And how does God see your children? Contrary to the world’s opinion, it is not through the lens of judgment looking only at their sins or imperfections, or whatever it may be that keeps them away from His heart.
God looks at your children with such deep and eternal love that it pierces through every cloud or shadow along the way, even through all the wonderful illusions the world sees, and right to the center of their beautiful being, right towards that place where God longs to be.
God sees more of their beauty than you could ever see them. God knows their worth far more than all the voices that claim they know how valuable they are.
For what you see is temporary and fading, and will always fall short of their God-given dignity, and the glory that awaits them for eternity.
God looks at your children as His true children, and therefore as human beings capable of the very best they could become.
When the disciples of Jesus tried to keep away the children from Him, they forbade them strongly.
“Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.’” - Matthew 19:!4 (NRSVCE)
In the same way, do not forbid your children to come to Him nor hinder God from drawing close. Because more than anything else, they are His children. Loved, valued, redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus Christ Himself. Who else but Him has the right to claim your children? Has the world ever sacrificed anything close to the sacrifice that God Himself has made?
God still speaks today. He speaks through His Church who has received the very power of His Spirit lest we go astray and follow the many deceiving voices in this world. He cares enough for us to give us this Church with whom He is the Head. If you truly love your children, then listen to His voice.
"The Church makes her own the attitude of the Lord Jesus, who offers his boundless love to each person without exception. During his life, Jesus took upon himself the suffering and rejection of others and did not hesitate to embrace them with compassion and tenderness. Today too, the Church seeks to accompany with care those who are in the most fragile situations, marked by pain and misunderstanding." -Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love), 2016
"The human person, made in the image and likeness of God, can hardly be adequately described by a reductionist reference to his or her sexual orientation. Every person has a fundamental identity: the creature of God, and by grace, his child and heir to eternal life." - Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, 1986
“You asked for a loving God: you have one. The great spirit you so lightly invoked, the ‘lord of terrible aspect’, is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist’s love for his work… provident and venerable as a father’s love for a child…” - C.S. Lewis
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem… How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” - Matthew 23:37 (NRSVCE)
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You may also want to read “What Do You Do When You’re a Catholic Parent With a Transgender Child?”
Everything seems to be as clear as black and white when you’re reading a book or when you’re in front of your computer screen. But when you come face to face with your transgender child, everything turns upside down. All you may see are various shades of gray. (Read more)