This sermon was preached by the Rev. Dr. Cameron Partridge, one of two chaplains to the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church, at the Council's meeting in Puerto Rico earlier this week. The service was an LGBTQIA+ Pride themed Eucharist honoring the feast day of St. Marinos the Monk.
Feast of Marinos the Monk (transf): James 1:19-27; Psalm 148; Luke 18:18–30
Executive Council, San Juan, Puerto Rico
June 16, 2026
In the name of God, who brings us through the fire. Amen.
Almost thirty years ago when I was in divinity school, I was a student appointee to a search committee for a faculty position in pre-modern Christian theology. When we had whittled the list down to the finalists, they began to visit the campus. Somewhere along the way, one of the finalists made a point to share with me a translation he had recently published of an early Christian text. It was a brief account of the life of a saint that I had never heard of: Marina or Marinos the monk. The story’s protagonist had been assigned female at birth, raised “with much teaching and in [the way of] a pious life” by a single father after the death of the mother. Once the child had arrived at adulthood, the father, Eugenios, planned to enter a monastery. He would hand over all his possessions to the adult child who would then need to find a new path toward stability and safety in the world—likely through marriage to a man. Upon sharing this plan, the adult child burst into tears and declared, “Father, do you wish to save your own soul and see mine destroyed? Do you not know what the Lord says? That the good shepherd gives his life for his sheep?” The story continued with a different plan: the two would answer Jesus’ call to the rich young man selling all that they owned, distributing the money to the poor, and following Jesus in religious life together (Luke 17:22), not as father and daughter but father and son. “I shall first cut off the hair of my head, and clothe myself like a man, and then enter the monastery with you,” said the child who took on the name Marinos. As they enacted this plan, Eugenios warned, “Child, take heed of how you conduct yourself, for you are about to enter into the midst of fire….”[1]
Ten years passed during which Marinos “advanced in all the virtues, in obedience, in humility, and in much asceticism.” His fellow monks read him as a eunuch due to him being what the text describes as “beardless and delicate of voice.” Then Eugenios died, leaving Marinos to carry on in the monastery, which he did with gusto, for this truly was his vocation in all the rich dimensions of that word. He was called to shape a life of prayer, embodying the Good News of Jesus Christ in an ascetic mode, sharing possessions in community as the apostles had modeled. His progression in this life drew out a divine gift of “healing those who were troubled by demons,” the text further explains, “for if [Marinos] placed a hand on any of the sick, they were immediately healed.”[2] He was, as our passage from the Letter of James emphasizes, both a hearer and a doer of the word. He was someone who could look in the mirror, see exactly who God was continually calling him to be and become, and carry that clarity into every facet of his life (James 1:22-24).
But then, a terrible twist. A young woman in the town surrounding the monastery became pregnant and rather than reveal the father, she blamed Marinos. Instead of refuting this charge, which would dangerously disclose the complex history of his gender and perhaps also put the young woman at risk, Marinos accepted the blame. Like his father before him, he went on to raise the child himself. Stigmatized and scorned, outside and then back inside the monastery (though sources seem to vary on this point), Marinos persevered until his own death years later.[3] As the monks prepared his body for burial, they came to realize the impossibility of the blame he had taken and how wrong they had been to judge him.
I remember reading this account in the days after the faculty candidate gave it to me, stunned on many levels. I would come to learn that this narrative was but one of many early and medieval Christian texts, in saints’ lives and in more doctrinally oriented theological reflections, that depict gender complexities of various forms, transforming and exceeding what we might think of today as the binary of male and female. But at that point, such sources were unknown to me. I was also very much wrestling with my own gender at this point, openly gay then but still discerning how I was called to embody my gender. Perhaps the candidate sensed this. Perhaps not. Perhaps God had a hand in sharing this particular text with me, as if to say, here too is an example of the grace given to so many people of God to reveal in their own ways the Good News embodied in splendor and mystery, sometimes hidden, sometimes struggling, yet ultimately glorying. Praising in our bodies and lives the God who, in the language of Ephesians, “created all things so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known” (Ephesians 3:8-10).
In this season after the Feast of Pentecost, and in this month of LGBTQIA+ Pride, the Spirit hovers over us, intervening, groaning, inspiring, advocating, sending us forth to rejoice in Her power. In the midst of the chaos and violence of our world, the oppression and marginalization of immigrants, communities of color, people of diverse sexualities and genders, economic status, and abilities, the Spirit breathes in us, calling us to witness. The Spirit challenges us to be, indeed to revel in being, the people of God in all our rich variety, refusing the containments and divisions, the targeting, polarization and distortions of our world. We are to be agents of healing as an outgrowth of our lives of prayer and service, as Marinos was.
Nearly thirty years after my first encounter with the life of Marinos, who is now on our calendar of saints (his feast day is officially tomorrow[4]), I found myself at a retreat for trans, non-binary and Two Spirit Episcopalians.[5] Over fifty of us were gathered, thanks to the stellar work of the Gender Justice Office of our Presiding Bishop’s staff – Aaron Scott and Amanda Fulton. The group leaned young – the largest group being people in their twenties to thirties, then their thirties to forties, a small group of folks in their fifties (my bracket), and a handful of folks in their sixties (one or two people in their seventies couldn’t make it). The center of generational gravity in trans communities trends young – I am often considered “old” in them. Meanwhile, in many Episcopal Church settings I am called “young.” At the retreat I was on an intergenerational panel of speakers as an “elder.” I cannot express to you how powerful this gathering was. Electrifying. I saw people I knew but also met many I had never before heard of or met – trans, nonbinary, and Two Spirit young adults who are on fire for the gospel. Who were from all around our church – Texas, Oklahoma, Utah, North Carolina, Hawaii, as well as Massachusetts, Washington State, California, and more. In this place, gathered together, we did not have to deal with the assumptions of so many in our world that one cannot be openly LGBTQIA+ and Christian, as if that were an oxymoron. We simply could be. We could recognize and in a truly safe space share how we are indeed making our way in the midst of fire. This group was also on fire for Jesus Christ, for the Holy Spirit, for the in-breaking of the realm of God in which we participate with vigor and deep hope and joy in the midst of struggle. This group continues to gather online more than monthly to encourage one another, pray together, and stoke the flames of our faith. Friends, this witness gives me so much hope, so much strength, so much gratitude. Thank you, Presiding Bishop, for your support for this gathering. May its flame of the Spirit surround, uplift, and sustain us for our shared ministry here, in our congregations and dioceses, and in the wider world.
[1] “The Life of Mary/Marinos” translated by Nicholas Constas in ed. Alice-Mary Talbot, Holy Women of Byzantium (Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections, 1996), 7.
[2] “The Life of Mary/Marinos,” 8
[3] “The Life of Mary/Marinos” depicts Marinos being expelled from the monastery. He sat outside its gate “and there endured the freezing cold and the burning heat.” The baby was born was brought to him there, and he raised the baby outside the monastery for three years before both were allowed back in. The baby grew up to become a monk himself (pp. 9-10). On the varying versions of Marinos’ story: https://www.maronite-institute.org/MARI/JMS/january00/Saint_Marina_the_Monk.htm
[4] https://www.lectionarypage.net/LesserFF/Jun/Marina.html; https://prayer.forwardmovement.org/calendar/marina-the-monk See also this 2023 Pride month reflection on Marinos from the Diocese of West Missouri: https://diowestmo.org/remembering-st-marinos-and-pride-month/
[5] https://episcopalnewsservice.org/2026/03/31/transgender-nonbinary-two-spirit-episcopalians-gather-for-inaugural-churchwide-retreat/
Feast of Marinos the Monk (transf): James 1:19-27; Psalm 148; Luke 18:18–30
Executive Council, San Juan, Puerto Rico
June 16, 2026
In the name of God, who brings us through the fire. Amen.
Almost thirty years ago when I was in divinity school, I was a student appointee to a search committee for a faculty position in pre-modern Christian theology. When we had whittled the list down to the finalists, they began to visit the campus. Somewhere along the way, one of the finalists made a point to share with me a translation he had recently published of an early Christian text. It was a brief account of the life of a saint that I had never heard of: Marina or Marinos the monk. The story’s protagonist had been assigned female at birth, raised “with much teaching and in [the way of] a pious life” by a single father after the death of the mother. Once the child had arrived at adulthood, the father, Eugenios, planned to enter a monastery. He would hand over all his possessions to the adult child who would then need to find a new path toward stability and safety in the world—likely through marriage to a man. Upon sharing this plan, the adult child burst into tears and declared, “Father, do you wish to save your own soul and see mine destroyed? Do you not know what the Lord says? That the good shepherd gives his life for his sheep?” The story continued with a different plan: the two would answer Jesus’ call to the rich young man selling all that they owned, distributing the money to the poor, and following Jesus in religious life together (Luke 17:22), not as father and daughter but father and son. “I shall first cut off the hair of my head, and clothe myself like a man, and then enter the monastery with you,” said the child who took on the name Marinos. As they enacted this plan, Eugenios warned, “Child, take heed of how you conduct yourself, for you are about to enter into the midst of fire….”[1]
Ten years passed during which Marinos “advanced in all the virtues, in obedience, in humility, and in much asceticism.” His fellow monks read him as a eunuch due to him being what the text describes as “beardless and delicate of voice.” Then Eugenios died, leaving Marinos to carry on in the monastery, which he did with gusto, for this truly was his vocation in all the rich dimensions of that word. He was called to shape a life of prayer, embodying the Good News of Jesus Christ in an ascetic mode, sharing possessions in community as the apostles had modeled. His progression in this life drew out a divine gift of “healing those who were troubled by demons,” the text further explains, “for if [Marinos] placed a hand on any of the sick, they were immediately healed.”[2] He was, as our passage from the Letter of James emphasizes, both a hearer and a doer of the word. He was someone who could look in the mirror, see exactly who God was continually calling him to be and become, and carry that clarity into every facet of his life (James 1:22-24).
But then, a terrible twist. A young woman in the town surrounding the monastery became pregnant and rather than reveal the father, she blamed Marinos. Instead of refuting this charge, which would dangerously disclose the complex history of his gender and perhaps also put the young woman at risk, Marinos accepted the blame. Like his father before him, he went on to raise the child himself. Stigmatized and scorned, outside and then back inside the monastery (though sources seem to vary on this point), Marinos persevered until his own death years later.[3] As the monks prepared his body for burial, they came to realize the impossibility of the blame he had taken and how wrong they had been to judge him.
I remember reading this account in the days after the faculty candidate gave it to me, stunned on many levels. I would come to learn that this narrative was but one of many early and medieval Christian texts, in saints’ lives and in more doctrinally oriented theological reflections, that depict gender complexities of various forms, transforming and exceeding what we might think of today as the binary of male and female. But at that point, such sources were unknown to me. I was also very much wrestling with my own gender at this point, openly gay then but still discerning how I was called to embody my gender. Perhaps the candidate sensed this. Perhaps not. Perhaps God had a hand in sharing this particular text with me, as if to say, here too is an example of the grace given to so many people of God to reveal in their own ways the Good News embodied in splendor and mystery, sometimes hidden, sometimes struggling, yet ultimately glorying. Praising in our bodies and lives the God who, in the language of Ephesians, “created all things so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known” (Ephesians 3:8-10).
In this season after the Feast of Pentecost, and in this month of LGBTQIA+ Pride, the Spirit hovers over us, intervening, groaning, inspiring, advocating, sending us forth to rejoice in Her power. In the midst of the chaos and violence of our world, the oppression and marginalization of immigrants, communities of color, people of diverse sexualities and genders, economic status, and abilities, the Spirit breathes in us, calling us to witness. The Spirit challenges us to be, indeed to revel in being, the people of God in all our rich variety, refusing the containments and divisions, the targeting, polarization and distortions of our world. We are to be agents of healing as an outgrowth of our lives of prayer and service, as Marinos was.
Nearly thirty years after my first encounter with the life of Marinos, who is now on our calendar of saints (his feast day is officially tomorrow[4]), I found myself at a retreat for trans, non-binary and Two Spirit Episcopalians.[5] Over fifty of us were gathered, thanks to the stellar work of the Gender Justice Office of our Presiding Bishop’s staff – Aaron Scott and Amanda Fulton. The group leaned young – the largest group being people in their twenties to thirties, then their thirties to forties, a small group of folks in their fifties (my bracket), and a handful of folks in their sixties (one or two people in their seventies couldn’t make it). The center of generational gravity in trans communities trends young – I am often considered “old” in them. Meanwhile, in many Episcopal Church settings I am called “young.” At the retreat I was on an intergenerational panel of speakers as an “elder.” I cannot express to you how powerful this gathering was. Electrifying. I saw people I knew but also met many I had never before heard of or met – trans, nonbinary, and Two Spirit young adults who are on fire for the gospel. Who were from all around our church – Texas, Oklahoma, Utah, North Carolina, Hawaii, as well as Massachusetts, Washington State, California, and more. In this place, gathered together, we did not have to deal with the assumptions of so many in our world that one cannot be openly LGBTQIA+ and Christian, as if that were an oxymoron. We simply could be. We could recognize and in a truly safe space share how we are indeed making our way in the midst of fire. This group was also on fire for Jesus Christ, for the Holy Spirit, for the in-breaking of the realm of God in which we participate with vigor and deep hope and joy in the midst of struggle. This group continues to gather online more than monthly to encourage one another, pray together, and stoke the flames of our faith. Friends, this witness gives me so much hope, so much strength, so much gratitude. Thank you, Presiding Bishop, for your support for this gathering. May its flame of the Spirit surround, uplift, and sustain us for our shared ministry here, in our congregations and dioceses, and in the wider world.
[1] “The Life of Mary/Marinos” translated by Nicholas Constas in ed. Alice-Mary Talbot, Holy Women of Byzantium (Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections, 1996), 7.
[2] “The Life of Mary/Marinos,” 8
[3] “The Life of Mary/Marinos” depicts Marinos being expelled from the monastery. He sat outside its gate “and there endured the freezing cold and the burning heat.” The baby was born was brought to him there, and he raised the baby outside the monastery for three years before both were allowed back in. The baby grew up to become a monk himself (pp. 9-10). On the varying versions of Marinos’ story: https://www.maronite-institute.org/MARI/JMS/january00/Saint_Marina_the_Monk.htm
[4] https://www.lectionarypage.net/LesserFF/Jun/Marina.html; https://prayer.forwardmovement.org/calendar/marina-the-monk See also this 2023 Pride month reflection on Marinos from the Diocese of West Missouri: https://diowestmo.org/remembering-st-marinos-and-pride-month/
[5] https://episcopalnewsservice.org/2026/03/31/transgender-nonbinary-two-spirit-episcopalians-gather-for-inaugural-churchwide-retreat/
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