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When the World Feels Like Good Friday
Reflection by Team Member Miguel Ochoa
Our world is heavy with turmoil. Each morning, I try to remind myself that everything is in God’s hands, that I am called to trust and allow God to do what God does. Some days that trust comes easily; many days it does not. I feel myself carrying a cross of my own, weighted with resentment and anger toward those who overlook the basic dignity of humanity.
I see images that haunt me: mothers and fathers pulled from their vehicles as their children scream and cry in fear; elderly tackled to the ground; young people dragged, crying out in pain; innocent people shot point blank for standing up for their neighbors. These scenes replay like modern-day Stations of the Cross. And I ask the same question that echoes through the Passion story: why? Since childhood, I have been told that everything happens for a reason, that God will provide. Yet when I look around and see fear and destruction everywhere, I find myself standing at the foot of the cross, doubting, trying to reconcile what I believe with what I see.
It is precisely here that Lent places us. Lent puts us in a place not away from the world’s suffering, but deep within it. Lent invites us to walk with Christ through the Passion, to recognize in his suffering the same forces we witness today: fear that hardens into cruelty, power that protects itself at the expense of the vulnerable, and silence that allows violence to continue. Jesus is forced to carry his cross through public streets, mocked and humiliated. At any moment, he could have said no. He was God, after all. He could have resisted. Instead, he walks on, absorbing the violence of the world rather than returning it.
When I watch people dragged from cars, thrown to the ground, stripped of dignity, I see Christ stumbling under the weight of the cross. When voices are ignored and lives dismissed, I hear the jeers of the crowd outside Jerusalem. The Passion is not confined to history; it continues wherever human dignity is denied.
All of this makes me think of the LGBTQ+ people who have gone before me.
There was a time when simply being, when existing openly, was enough to invite violence, imprisonment, or death. While I know this still happens today, I cannot deny that I feel safer being myself now than I might have fifty years ago. Not long ago, someone like me could have been pulled from a car, beaten in the street, locked away, or killed, not for what they had done, but simply for who they were.
Here again, the parallels are unavoidable. A body made public. A life judged and condemned. A cross imposed by fear and misunderstanding. Like Christ on the road to Calvary, LGBTQ+ people have been forced to carry crosses they did not choose, often in silence, often under threat, often with the world watching.
Yet Lent does not ask us to remain in despair. As we reflect on the Passion and death of Christ, especially during Holy Week, we are also called to remember what comes next. Jesus rises. Love prevails. Christ returns to those who abandoned him and says, “Peace be with you.” This is not a denial of suffering; it is God’s refusal to let suffering have the final word.
It is this promise that gives me the mustard seed of faith I need when the images are overwhelming — faith that mountains of violence, fear, and hatred can still be lifted and cast into the sea. As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, I know that we are still resurrecting, still rising, still healing from the wounds of both our past and our present. And I believe that resurrection is not only personal, but communal.
I pray that the peace Christ offers will be made visible in our streets, in our communities, and in our country. I pray that it manifests itself in the way we protect the vulnerable, speak for the silenced, and refuse to look away from suffering. And as we enter this season of Lenten reflection, let us pray for all who carry a cross they did not ask for: for those living in fear, for those uncertain of their futures or the futures of those they love, and for all who long for resurrection in a world that still so often feels like Good Friday.
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