On this Easter, I pray that we can be delivered from hatred and evil
Normally, for me Holy Week represents a time for reflection and rejuvenation. I have written many columns about it, including why Maundy Thursday is my favorite day of the liturgical year.
This year I am struggling.
The world created by the Trump administration seemed to creep into every service, every reading, every prayer, every gospel so far this week. And we have yet to hit Easter.
For example, I served as my vestry’s lay listener last weekend. That means I attended each of the three services my church offers and greeted our parishioners. Because it happened to be Palm Sunday, I also participated in three different processions from outside where the service began back into the church. That in turn came only a week after my wife and I had marched in the April 5th “Hands Off” protests.
A few days later, what is normally an annual day of joy turned into a source of malaise.
The central tenet of my Christian faith is the last, and most important, edict issued by Jesus: “I give you a new commandment: Love one one another as I have loved you.” He gave the directive during the Last Supper, the event commemorated on Maundy Thursday. But this year I found myself completely preoccupied and overcome before we even got there.
Our first reading from the Book of Exodus recounted Jewish preparation for Passover (which happens to entirely coincide with Holy Week this year). The image of a people eating lamb while standing and preparing to flee Egypt immediately made me think of the millions of families in America terrified that any moment ICE agents may sweep them up. It does not take much imagination to see the persecuted masses of today in that reading.
Similarly, the gospel hymn (“Kneels at the feet of his friends”) refrain “fill us with your love, show us how to serve the neighbors we have …” stood in contrast to the political strife courted by the current administration. The gospel itself, with the footwashing lesson modeled by Jesus himself, and the prayers of the people for “the poor, the hungry, the oppressed and those in prison” both seemed interspersed by recently remembered headlines diametrically opposed to recent new chryons.
We prayed for peace on the same day another school shooter murdered innocents after a history of angry, far-right advocacy.
The tears that fell down my cheeks were from pain and sadness and a sense of foreboding worry rather than the gratitude and joy I normally experience during that Mass. Beyond the comforting presence of my wife, I felt emptied — as stripped as the altar at the end of Mass.
But it got worse.
On Friday — Good Friday — the Trump White House posted an altered picture of The New York Times front page depicting Sen. Chris Van Hollen meeting with a man wrongfully deported by the Trump Administration to a notorious prison in El Salvador. They crossed out the word “wrongly” and the phrase “Maryland Man,” which they replaced with “MS-13 Illegal Alien” handwritten in red ink. Not content to stop there, it added “Who’s Never Coming Back.”
The White House reveled in its cruelty on the same day Christians solemnly remember the torture and crucifixion of Jesus.
As I sat in Mass thinking about that callous posting, not to mention the underlying deportation of a man without due process to a brutal prison in a foreign country, I could feel my blood pressure rise. So-called “Christians” across the country cheered on this activity; the most charitable I could be was a begrudging “they know not what they do.”
While I doubt the administration meant to make a clearly blasphemous Easter statement when it declared “Who’s Never Coming Back,” sitting in church it seemed hard not to see the through line. The good news of the resurrection is based entirely on Christ coming back to the people. The Trump administration sought to trumpet the bad news of a family and community awaiting the return of a man still alive, but locked away behind a metaphorical boulder in a distant land.
That is revolting morally and ethically, but astounding religiously given the timing.
Personally, I have always prioritized Easter behind both Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. I think the world would be a far different, better place if we focused on footwashing and the Love Commandment were the primary focus of celebration. The idea of bodily resurrection, and personally being born again after death, has felt a bit selfish and indulgent to me.
Yet in a faith exploration meeting between Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday, another parishioner heard out my views and explained that she saw resurrection as not so much about the body, but about the triumph of good over evil. As she put it, “evil does not get to win.”
On Easter Sunday as I kneel before God in my pew, that is what I will be praying over. There has been, and continues to be, great evil in our world today. People in power acting unjustly and with fervor in the torment of others. To that I will pray that we may be delivered from such hatred, that the evil we currently face does not get to win.
Mario Nicolais is an attorney and columnist who writes on law enforcement, the legal system, health care and public policy. Follow him on Bluesky: @MarioNicolais.bsky.social.
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