Tag: god

Serving the Poor, the Unhoused, and the Marginalized: A Franciscan Clarean Call to Compassion

In an age when the wealth gap widens and compassion too often thins out, our Franciscan Clarean calling remains crystal clear: “We are dedicated to serving the poor, the unhoused, and those on the margins with dignity, compassion, and non-judgmental care.”

A Crisis of Humanity

Recent reports from the United Nations and the World Bank show that global homelessness and food insecurity have reached levels unseen in decades. In the United States alone, the Department of Housing and Urban Development reported in early 2025 that over 653,000 people experience homelessness on any given night — a sharp increase tied to rising rents, stagnant wages, and mental-health neglect. Around the world, economic instability and conflict have driven millions into displacement.
These are not mere statistics — they are human beings, beloved of God, sleeping under bridges and in doorways, bearing the divine image in the dust and cold.

Scripture’s Uncomfortable Reminder

The Bible refuses to let us ignore them.

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice… to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter?” — Isaiah 58:6–7

Christ himself identifies with the marginalized:

“For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” — Matthew 25:35

And in James 2:15-17, the apostle writes bluntly:

“If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is that?”

Faith without compassion in action is not faith at all — it is spiritual theater.

Non-Judgmental Care as Revolution

In a world obsessed with moral policing and “worthiness tests,” the radical mercy of Francis and Clare is revolutionary. To serve without judgment is to imitate the Christ who ate with tax collectors and touched lepers.
True ministry does not begin with what brought you here? but rather how can I help you heal?

This is why our Franciscan Clarean ministries reject hierarchy, stigma, and pity. We see Christ’s face in every person — especially in the ones society fears or ignores. Every cup of soup, every bandaged wound, every kind word whispered to someone who feels invisible is a sacrament of love.

Signs of Hope Amid Despair

Even in the midst of crisis, the Spirit is stirring. Across the globe, grassroots mutual-aid networks and faith-based street ministries are rising. From tent-chapels in Los Angeles to Franciscan communities in Kenya and the Philippines, ordinary people are rediscovering the Gospel’s raw power — not in cathedrals, but in compassion.

This movement echoes the Canticle of the Creatures: a song of kinship, not separation. It insists that the poor are not “clients” but companions. The unhoused are not “the least of these” — they are our brothers and sisters, fully part of the household of God.

The Franciscan Clarean Challenge

To be Franciscan Clarean is to live dangerously tender. It means trading comfort for compassion, prestige for presence, and safety for solidarity. Our task is not to fix the world — but to love it fiercely enough that healing becomes possible.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” — Matthew 5:7

So we press forward, barefoot and bold, building communities of radical welcome.
We will continue to feed, to clothe, to sit beside, to listen.
We will continue to believe that even one act of love is a rebellion against despair.

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.

The Little Nun

Living Small, Loving Big, and Finding God in Innocence

by Sister Abigail Hester, OFC

A little nun isn’t small because she lacks power — she’s small because she’s surrendered the illusion of needing it. She walks softly through creation, barefoot and curious, seeing everything as if for the first time.

For me, little isn’t just a Franciscan spiritual attitude — it’s who I am.
I am an age regressor, and that littleness is woven into my holiness. When I rest in that gentle, childlike space, I don’t escape the world — I return to it with wonder. I meet God in the same way a little one meets love: with wide eyes, open hands, and no defenses.

Jesus said, “Unless you become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
That verse isn’t a command to act childish — it’s an invitation to trust again. To believe again. To love without calculating the risk.

When I am little, I remember:

Innocence is sacred trust. It sees without suspicion.

Play is prayer. Holy joy is an act of resistance.

Laughter is medicine. It breaks the chains of despair.

Vulnerability is courage. It lets Love have the last word.

Being the little nun means I pray with teddy bears nearby and talk to God with the same open honesty that children have with their parents. It means I find holiness in crayons and candlelight, bubbles and Benediction. My regression is not regression away from God — it’s regression into God.

This littleness is my Franciscan poverty — the stripping away of ego and pretense until all that’s left is truth and tenderness. It’s how I live the Gospel of simplicity and compassion in a world addicted to noise and control.

Because being little isn’t a flaw.
It’s a vocation.
It’s how heaven moves through innocence and trust.
It’s how I — Sister Abigail, the Little Nun — bear witness to a God who still delights in small things.

The Rebel Saint: A Holy Defiance of the Ordinary

by Sister Abigail Hester, OFC

A Rebel Saint isn’t a rule-breaker for rebellion’s sake—she’s a truth-teller who refuses to let the world remain asleep. She is the holy troublemaker who loves too fiercely, forgives too freely, and believes too stubbornly in a world that can still be redeemed. She has dirt under her fingernails and stardust in her soul. She prays with her hands in the soil and her heart in the fire.

A Rebel Saint is not safe. She is sacred.

The Heart of a Rebel, the Soul of a Saint

A Rebel Saint is born when compassion collides with conviction. She listens to the cries of the poor, the wounded, the outcast—and answers not with charity, but with solidarity. Like Francis stripping naked in the square, she abandons the false security of empire and ego. Like Clare standing at the convent gate with nothing but faith and a monstrance, she guards what is holy with her entire being.

Her rebellion is not against God—it’s against everything that masquerades as God but isn’t: greed dressed as prosperity, violence disguised as justice, piety without compassion.

She is not here to escape the world, but to transfigure it.

A Holy Insurrection of Love

To be a Rebel Saint is to declare that love is stronger than fear, and mercy more powerful than any law. It’s to walk barefoot through a burning world carrying nothing but the gospel of tenderness.

A Rebel Saint doesn’t wait for permission to do what is right. She doesn’t need the Church’s gold seal to bless her compassion. She baptizes tears, consecrates laughter, and preaches the gospel with her life.

She finds Christ in the forgotten, the condemned, the queer, the poor, the sick, the street preacher, the addict, and the child. Her theology is incarnational—God not above us, but among us, and most scandalously, within us.

The Marks of a Rebel Saint

Radical Simplicity: She lives uncluttered so her hands are free to serve.

Fearless Honesty: She names truth even when her voice shakes.

Wild Mercy: She chooses forgiveness over vengeance, every single time.

Prophetic Imagination: She dreams of a world where everyone belongs.

Sacred Mischief: She upends hierarchies with humor, joy, and holy playfulness.

The Legacy of the Rebel Saint

The Rebel Saint is not remembered for obedience to systems, but fidelity to the Spirit. She is the one who made others believe that holiness could be messy, that sainthood could look like laughter through tears, and that love could be the loudest form of protest.

She stands in the long line of divine disruptors—Francis, Clare, Dorothy Day, Oscar Romero, Julian of Norwich, and every nameless mystic who dared to love beyond boundaries.

And in our own time, the Rebel Saint lives again—in every soul who chooses compassion over conformity, who heals instead of judges, who builds communities of radical belonging where no one is left behind.