Today’s opinion comes from guest contributor Flora X. Sourness. Flora is a doctoral candidate in theology and peace studies at the University of Notre Dame. She is originally from Beijing, China and now lives in South Bend, Indiana.
The religious text for Palm Sunday can be found here.
Six years ago, while leading the inaugural Palm Sunday procession from the exterior of my church to the altar, I came out as queer.
Or a better way to say it might be that I decided that this liturgical-maximalist Palm Sunday procession would be the most appropriate feast day that I could choose to celebrate as my “coming anniversary” each year. . familiar chant from my lips Hosanna Philio David Singing hymns and lazily waving a palm branch with my right hand, I told myself – and probably also told God – that yes, I am queer, and yes, I am loved.
For many years before coming out, the experience of coming to terms with my sexuality was a slow and prayerful process of introspection and discernment. Contrast that with how movies about gay people can portray the experience of coming out (hint). Love, Simon), it was never a clear, light bulb moment of realizing my sexuality with immediate certainty.
But if realizing I was gay was a confusing and long process, the idea of ”coming out” was even more so. In both Catholic and outside settings, “coming out” as gay did not feel like verbally announcing one’s sexuality once and for all to the entire world, but rather like indicating one’s homosexuality in front of those present. It seemed more like using a combination of signs and subtle cues that I considered to be affirming. , and keeping the weird parts of yourself away from people who probably aren’t like that. Living as a queer person means dealing with these never-ending uncertainties and nuances on a daily basis.
Perhaps this is why it seemed appropriate to choose one of the most glorious and theologically extraordinary days of the liturgical year as a commemoration of my coming out: on Palm Sunday, we commemorate the glorious entry of Jesus into Jerusalem and his final death. Let’s read the gospel. on the cross. On Palm Sunday, we declare that God loves us, even to the point of God’s own death. When I came to myself and to God on Palm Sunday, I was sure – and took comfort in this certainty – that God loves me for who I am because He died for me.
But today’s gospel reading, which is from the Gospel of Mark this liturgical year, tells a story where Jesus – who spent much of this gospel hiding his identity as the Messiah from his community – reveals himself as the Messiah. He does, and is then executed by Roman officials because of this scandalous revelation. His “coming out” results in violence.
As an academic committed to nonviolence and peace, this perspective has made my relationship with Palm Sunday uncertain. If everyone is called to follow Jesus and self-sacrifice in their lives, are we as queer Catholics also called to a life of suffering, ostracism and perhaps even death because we choose to show up? Who are we? Are we, by repeating many Catholic teachings on gender and sexuality, “embracing our own cross?” Or, are we, as the dominant gay narrative in America suggests, always told to be prepared to come out as gay, no matter what potential risks or dangers we may face as a result?
I would love to answer all of these questions with a resounding “no” and tell anyone who doubts that they are loved without question. But the gospel stories of Palm Sunday and Holy Week – and how people have interpreted these gospels over the centuries – make it difficult to provide a simple, clear confirmation.
For example, I still don’t know why, in a world already filled with so much violence, the self-revelation of a loving God and death on the cross is one of the most sacred weeks of our Catholic tradition. I claim on the basis of faith – yet don’t really know – whether Jesus’ own suffering and death is really something we should always imitate. In a world that is already filled with unjust murder and death of marginalized people, I don’t know why violence and death are held to a pedestal of sanctity in our faith tradition, or why gay Catholics have always had to do so in their own Why are we asked to embrace the cross? -Sacrifice.
I don’t know, and more importantly I don’t want to believe, that self-sacrifice and long suffering is the only way to live a life of Christ-like love. Instead I want to pray for the safety, life, support, happiness and prosperity of all our gay and trans brothers and sisters. I pray for a world where gay kids don’t die. And I pray for a world where deaths are mourned rather than glorified.
Because of the glorious proclamation of God’s constant love for me in the Passion narrative, even to the point of death, I came to be strange on Palm Sunday. The certainty of Jesus dying for me consoled me at a time when my strange experience and my strange future were unclear and confusing. I’m no longer so sure whether the image of the incarnate Son of God dying on the cross can give me and other gay people hope and comfort in a violent, anti-gay church and world.
But my annual commemoration of this Palm Sunday—the coming feast day—(and all the unique joys that have come since that day in my own life six years ago) gives me a reason to keep trying and to keep hoping.
,Flora X. Tang, 24 March 2024
