The story of Easter is one that is deeply embodied, for Jesus, whose body is missing from the tomb, but also for his followers and friends. In Queer Theology: Beyond Apologetics, Linn Marie Tonstad asserts that the body is essential for doing the work of theology. She writes: “Theology is about bodies meeting bodies, and where bodies meet are also images, representations, imaginations, fantasies” (92). Influenced by the work of queer theologian Marcella Althaus-Reid, Tonstad constructs an approach that centralizes the body in theological discourse, articulating that human sexuality, sensuality, and embodied experience are inextricably related to any encounters with the divine. This is what she calls a “queer theology that is beyond apologetics.” By moving “beyond apologetics,” Tonstad means wanting to move beyond questions of mere queer inclusion, and center theology around queerness through sexuality and embodiment.

This framework of “queering” extends beyond the critique of heteronormativity, and expands into discourse surrounding the body. In our current society, the ‘normative body’ assumes bodies that are cisgender, male, fit, toned, cleaned – but our lived realities portray bodies that are non-male, unruly, and broken. A theological emphasis on queer embodiment captures the necessary messiness of humanity, celebrates the diversity of bodies, and finds grace within all bodies no matter what society claims. 

In Indecent Theology, Marcella Althaus-Reid imagines iconography differently, undressing the Virgin Mary so that she is more bodied, more vulnerable, and more relatable. She asserts that “all theology is sexual theology” (1). While included in the definition, a sexual theology not only captures intimacy between bodies and the self, but captures the sexualized and sensory nature of every action. Each of which, Althaus-Reid writes, connects people with, or pulls people from, knowing or feeling loved by God. The spiritual plane is not a stream of theoretical possibilities, but is concretely in our midst revealing itself through the tactile moments. 

In my inclusive Catholic parish in Boston, I attended the services for Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Saturday night’s Easter Vigil. Throughout these last days, I have been meditating on the emotions and embodied reactions Jesus and the people surrounding him must have felt as he prepared to suffer and die, as his followers prepared to lose their friend and teacher. I imagine the swirling pains of betrayal, the comfort and satisfaction of sharing a meal with friends, the pain and exhaustion of carrying the cross, and the utter hopelessness and depletion at the end of Good Friday and Holy Saturday. I think here, especially, of Mary Magdalene weeping in front of the tomb. When have I wept? For what have I wept? 

Althaus-Reid and Tonstad are confronting the things for which many of us may weep: the isolation and judgment of our embodied realities. As a fat woman, it is hard for me to embrace my body as that which allows me to engage my spirituality. I have been taught from a young age that my body is something that needs to be changed in order to be good. If that’s the case, then how am I to trust it as the vessel that allows me to know and be known by God? Althaus-Reid and Tonstad’s works invite us to believe that the body is good as it is, in the form it has taken. That the body is what allows us to be authentically who we are, and that God knows us in this authenticity. What I appreciate most about their work is perhaps their desire for the body to represent the vulnerable and concrete realities of who we are – not what the world wants us to be. 

When Jesus calls out to Mary Magdalene, “Why are you weeping? What are you looking for?” I place myself in her shoes, exposed and emotional. When he calls out to her by name, I am reminded that Jesus calls us close to his side when we are the most authentic, exposed, and vulnerable versions of ourselves. That in order to be resurrected with Christ we must live in our bodies, just as Jesus did in his life before resurrection. Easter is a time when joy returns, but my prayer for each of us is that we can embrace and feel that joy with, within, and about our bodies. 

I would like to encourage everyone to do a short body scan, guided by the question that Jesus asked Mary Magdalene: “For what have I wept?” 

Sit quietly and breathe. 

Start at your feet and ask yourself: how do my feet feel? Do they weep? Do they sing? 

Move up to your legs, and ask this question again. 

Move up into your hips and stomach, and ask it again.

Move up into your chest, your throat, your back, and the back of your neck, and ask it again.

Move up into your mouth, your eyes, and the top of your head, and ask it again.

Don’t forget to breathe. Breathe deeply, gently asking the question Jesus asked Mary Magdalene. “How do I feel? Do I weep? Do I sing?”

Then move back down your body, letting every part of your body be filled with Joy in the wake of constant and gentle breaths. 

Move down through the top of your head, through your eyes, through your mouth allowing the joy of the season to wash through yourself. 

Then move down into the back of your neck, your throat, your back, your chest, and let them be washed with joy.

Then into your stomach and into your hips. Breathing joy into each part.

Then through your legs and your calves.

And finally, we reach back where we started. Your feet now abreath with joy.

Cecilia Gentili was a beloved and legendary artist and trans healthcare and inclusion activist. Cecilia was born in Argentina, then immigrated to the United States where she fought for queer healthcare access in New York City. She co-founded Cecilia’s Occupational Inclusion Network (COIN), the first dedicated healthcare network for sex workers. In her life, she put on two one-woman plays (The Knife Cuts Both Ways and Red Ink), starred in the FX show Pose, and wrote a book titled Faltas: Letters to Everyone in My Hometown Who Isn’t My Rapist. 

Gentili died in February 2024, and there was a funeral held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in NYC. Over a thousand people came to celebrate her life. Videos from the service were wonderfully joyous and mournful with musical performances and people dancing in the aisles. Unfortunately, the priests saying the funeral mass cut it short citing “irreverence.” Cecilia’s family and community have demanded the Archdiocese and Cardinal apologize. 

Cecilia’s life embodies the queer theologies above, and the gospel call to tirelessly love and fight for the joy and freedom of all.