Gender Roles

Understanding God’s plan for gender and sex

06/06/2022

Responsorial Psalm 87:1-2, 3 and 5, 6-7 R. (3) Glorious things are told of you, O city of God. His foundation upon the holy mountains the LORD loves: The gates of Zion, more than any dwelling of Jacob. R. Glorious things are told of you, O city of God. Glorious things are said of you, O city of God! And of Zion they shall say: One and all were born in her; And he who has established her is the Most High LORD.” R. Glorious things are told of you, O city of God. They shall note, when the peoples are enrolled: “This man was born there.” And all shall sing, in their festive dance: “My home is within you.” R. Glorious things are told of you, O city of God.

It is a very sensitive subject today to talk about gender roles: whether you should refer to people as “he” or “she” or “they”. And this topic causes a lot of people a great deal of anxiety and angst, so what I am going to say, please know it comes with great love, respect and above all, prayer. Why prayer? Well, while we as individual persons are struggling to understand gender – being masculine or feminine – God also has an understanding of what gender means. And I am convinced we will only find true and lasting peace in our own life, and in our human community, when we bring our understanding closer to God’s understanding.

Have you ever noticed how we assign a gender to inanimate objects? If you have ever owned a boat, did you give it a name? Most likely, the name was feminine. Even if the name was masculine – like the "Pequod" of Captain Ahab – the ship itself is always referred to as “she”. We often refer to our cars with a feminine pronoun, saying: “Check out my car: she is a beauty!”

The reason we apply the feminine gender to ships and cars is because they possess mother-like qualities. They protect us, they carry us, they nurture our communal life on the stormy seas of life. In other words, even if people are puzzled by whether or not they themselves are masculine or feminine, there is a sort of “natural gender” we bestow on inanimate objects because gender sheds light on their purpose and why they exist.

Did you notice the gender in our Responsorial Psalm today where it talks about the “City of God”? See if you can tell which gender – masculine or feminine – the Psalmist applies to the City of God. We read in Ps 87: “Glorious things are said of you, O city of God! And of Zion they shall say: ‘One and all were born in HER; And he who has established HER is the Most High God.” Did you catch the gender of the City of God? Of course you did because I made it painfully obvious. In other words, it is not just boats and cars that have these feminine, motherly qualities, so do cities, especially the City of God.

But notice now we are not just talking about natural gender that comes from the natural world. This is a supernatural gender that comes from the Bible, the inspired Word of God. The Bible is not just what man thinks, but far more importantly, the Scriptures convey what God thinks. And in the end what God thinks is what will matter because that is how things will be eternally.

If you have followed me this far, maybe you will take one more step with me. The City of God in the Old Testament was not only a “mother”, she was also a “metaphor”. What does that mean? Well, ultimately the City of God that Psalm 87 describes will be fully realized, in glorious splendor, as the Church in the New Testament. John sees this City-Church in Revelation 21:2, where he says: “I also saw the holy city, a new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a BRIDE adorned for HER husband.”

Let me ask you again: did you catch the gender of the new Jerusalem that comes down from heaven? Of course you did, because again I made it painfully obvious. The eternal city is a “she”, indeed, she is a “bride”, ready to marry her husband. This is the testimony of Sacred Scripture regarding gender roles: the Church is the new Jerusalem, the City of God, and she is a Bride adorned for her husband, Jesus.

So, will there be gender roles and identities in heaven? And by the way, we will be in heaven a lot longer than we will be on earth, so that matters more, infinitely more. Yes, each human person will be male or female in heaven, just like God created them in Gn 1:27: “God created mankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

Nonetheless, beyond being individually male and female, we will be collectively female (a Bride) because that is our deepest identity in relation to Christ, our Savior but also our Spouse. And that is why Mother Mary is the perfect model of the Church. She shows us while we are still on earth, what and who we will be in heaven: the City of God, a Bride adorned for her husband. That will be our truest gender and our deepest identity because that is what we will be for eternity.

Praised be Jesus Christ!