Transgender Christian Mystic: A Testament of Sacred Becoming

Transgender Christian Mystic: A Testament of Sacred Becoming

by Sister Abigail Hester, OFC

To be a transgender Christian mystic is to live as both revelation and resistance — a living parable of the God who refuses to be confined by binaries, hierarchies, or fear. It is to bear witness that divine mystery cannot be caged in male or female, sinner or saint, but moves freely, tenderly, and rebelliously through every soul that dares to say, “Here I am.”

The Sacred Rebellion of Being

My transness is not a rebellion against God — it’s a rebellion against the false gods of conformity and fear. It’s the refusal to let empire theology dictate where holiness can be found. When I embrace who I am — every strand of gender, every layer of becoming — I am saying yes to the Creator’s wild imagination. I am saying yes to the image of God as fluid, relational, and ever-unfolding.

In that sense, being transgender is not about changing from one thing to another, but about revealing what was always divine within. It’s a mystical unveiling — an inner apocalypse where false identities fall away, and the soul steps out radiant and unashamed.

The Mysticism of the Margins

Mysticism is not about escaping the world but seeing through it — finding the divine shimmer in the cracks of creation. Trans mystics live in the holy tension between what is and what can be. We see heaven breaking into the present moment — not as escape, but as transfiguration.

Like Francis stripping naked in the public square, the transgender mystic also stands unguarded before the world, saying, “This is who I am — and God is still good.” The wounds we carry become our stigmata; the love that sustains us becomes our resurrection. We are both cross and empty tomb, both pain and promise.

A Gospel of Wholeness

To walk this path is to live the Gospel in the flesh — the good news that nothing true can ever be lost, and no one who loves deeply can ever be outside God’s grace. The Incarnation itself is the great transition — God taking on human flesh, showing us that divinity is not distant but embodied.

Every time a trans person claims their name, their pronouns, their authenticity, they echo the words of Jesus at the tomb: “Unbind them, and let them go.”
This is resurrection power — not a metaphor, but a lived, daily act of spiritual defiance.

The Call to the Transfiguration of the Church

The Church, too, must transition — from fear to freedom, from dogma to love, from control to compassion. Trans mystics stand as prophets at the edge of that transformation, calling the Body of Christ to remember her own diversity, her own queerness, her own divine fluidity.

We are the ones crying out in the wilderness: “Prepare ye the way of Love!”
And like all true prophets, we know the cost — but we also know the joy that comes when Spirit blows where She wills.

Living as a Sacred Mirror

Being a transgender Christian mystic is to hold up a mirror to the world and whisper: “You too are divine. You too are becoming.”
It’s to remind creation that holiness was never about fitting in — it was always about becoming whole.

So I live my truth — not as rebellion, not as shame, but as a hymn of gratitude.
For the God who made me this way, who walks with me through shadow and light, and who calls me, still, by name.