I always become pensive during the week before Easter Sunday. It is a time in the Catholic Church when we recall the Passion of Jesus which was the ultimate definition of how we should all be. He engaged in human suffering and endured political violence and ultimately death in defense of the morality that he strove to teach us. He gave us the new commandment of loving our neighbor as much as we love ourselves. He demonstrated the pain and sorrow that we must sometimes bear if we are to follow that commitment. 

There is an irony taking place this season that should be filling the hearts all people of peace and goodwill. As we prepare to celebrate the glorious resurrection of Jesus Christ our fellow brothers and sisters are suffering indignities that many of them do not deserve. In particular our nation under the command of our president is welding a fist against people that he has deemed to be our enemies rather than demonstrating the mercy that Jesus exemplified throughout his short life here on earth. 

We may indeed have both foreign and homegrown criminals among us and it is right and just to remove them from society and constrain them in prisons, but this should only be done when we are certain that they are indeed guilty of the horrors attributed to them. Right now immigrants in our land are being plucked off of the streets with little or no evidence of their guilt. They are being sent to a jail of horrors in El Salvador without due process to determine the extent of their infractions beyond just being here illegally. 

If we are to be a nation of laws it is incumbent on all of us to demand that the deportation of individuals living among us be fair, not a mockery like the trial and persecution that Jesus endured more than two thousand years ago. Surely those of us who have heard the story of Jesus and read his words must know that cruelty without conscience is always wrong even when the reasons for it purport to protect us from harm. 

Ours is a nation built on fairness but we have certainly had moments when the ideals of our Constitution have been ignored. The United States is guilty of the national sin of slavery in the past and the harsh treatment of the descendants of slaves still reverberates more than it should even to this day. Now we watch often with silence as men are sent to El Salvador to rot in a prison so vile that it should be listed as a crime against humanity. Supposedly we had moved past such horrific punishment but instead those in power are applauding the psychological and physical destruction of people whose full stories have yet to be told. 

These same people purport to be Christians of the highest order. They want prayers in schools and the ten commandments posted in government buildings. They want the Untied States to be known as a Christian nation even as their lies and cruelty fly in the face of all that is holy. They celebrate their hatefulness and threaten those who would dare to question them. They humiliate the president of Ukraine and warmly welcome the president who resides over a prison that should be outlawed for its indecent treatment. 

I don’t claim to know what Jesus would do in the current situation but I know what he did when he saw such things in his own time. He pushed back on hypocrisy. He performed miracles to save people in defiance of rules that would have left them to die. He embraced those who were suffering. He made friends with outcasts. He forgave those willing to repent. He showed us how to live moral lives without prejudice or beliefs that one person was better than another. He bore the cross of hate and persecution.

I plan to protest on Holy Saturday. I do not want to be hiding in fear while seeing my fellow humans being mistreated. I will stand for the innocents who have been wrongly imprisoned. I will stand with trans men and women who do nothing to harm us but are subjected to humiliation. I will stand with the people of Ukraine who did not start a war, but who were attacked by a vile dictator intent on grabbing their land. I will stand for the message that Jesus gave us in his Sermon on the Mount. He taught us to love, to forgive, to be just and devoted to equality for all people. I will stand for truth and fairness. I will remember his words, “Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence of all that he taught. 

We all have work to do if we are to truly remember Jesus on Easter Sunday. He told us that it would not be easy to do what is right “when men shall revile you., and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.” Nonetheless we should remember that when we follow his example we will be blessed.

The coming days and weeks will be difficult. It will be easier to look away and pretend that all is well but as long as anyone is suffering we must respond in the ways that Jesus showed us. This is how we honor and praise him.