Prior to Operation Midway Blitz, the brutal ICE campaign that began in and around Chicago last September, I thought I had a pretty solid prayer life. Morning prayer with the Give Us This Day monthly booklet, meditation breaks, contemplative walks, Mass, the Examen, and the Rosary (on good days). I felt that my spiritual routine could sustain me through the worst moments, even an apocalypse.
It didn’t.
Throughout the fall, Chicago was hit left and right, as hundreds of Border Patrol and ICE agents unlawfully detained our immigrant sisters and brothers in dehumanizing raids. For the agents, it was a hunt, armed as they were with massive weapons and tear gas canisters. For us, it was a gut-wrenching violation of dignity that left us traumatized. With whistles and phones, we were watching our neighbors, señores, workers, loved ones, and parishioners being shoved and tackled on sidewalks and dragged into large vehicles.
For me, a first-generation Mexican American, this was especially heartbreaking. I saw my people profiled and terrorized. The streets of my childhood neighborhood, La Villita, in the heart of Chicago, were filled with endless raids as helicopters flew overhead. A señora from my home parish kept texting me in panic, “Joanna, es ICE otra vez?”
At work, at the Coalition for Spiritual and Public Life (CSPL), we were in rapid response mode. Training our members on what to do. Advocating for better protections at the state level. Responding to the humanitarian crisis unfolding inside the Broadview ICE facility. Community organizing is empowering. But the cycle of actions, trainings, responses, news reports, and anticipating the next worst thing, took a toll.
I was in a constant state of dysregulation. I was frequently getting sick. My body would let out llantos, guttural cries, pleading for Maria’s help. The stress was affecting my sleep. Prayer no longer grounded me. My spiritual life began to feel hollow, and I found myself in a long period of spiritual desolation.
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There were moments where the desolation would fall away, though. Consolation was woven through the collective actions we organized with CSPL. Like when the clouds parted and the rain stopped just in time for our People’s Mass outside a naval base. We all let out a sigh of relief and smiled. Or when we felt the Holy Spirit move through a crowd gathered outside the Broadview ICE facility, as hundreds of us sang “Pan de Vida” at the top of our lungs. Just two weeks before she died at the age of ninety-one, legendary immigrants’ rights activist Sr. JoAnn Persch joined us for the All Saints Day Mass, smiling and hugging dozens of people.
My prayer began transforming. It became less about maintaining a solo routine and more about praying in community. I felt the Spirit moving through our shared grief and resistance. Along with community came more honesty and humility—a deep knowing that there was support and divine orchestration beyond the veil of appearances. I felt the Communion of Saints and ancestors interceding for us, guiding us, whispering to me in my dreams, “Aqui estamos, échale ganas.”
Reflecting on how I lived through Operation Midway Blitz in light of the Triduum, I realize I was in the tomb on Holy Saturday—that liminal space between devastation and resurrection. I was surrounded by darkness, but it was the People of God who reminded me that God’s love will always prevail. In that darkness, I began to understand what the resurrection actually means, and what it demands.
The Greek word for Resurrection is “anastasis,” meaning “to stand up” or “to rise up.”
I saw living examples of “anastasis” unfolding all around me in our coalition. I saw community members like Irma, Alicia, Andrés, Don Lalo and others at Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Melrose Park, training fellow parishioners how to respond to ICE raids and detentions. I saw Catholic university students across Loyola, Dominican, DePaul, and Catholic Theological Union building social justice teams, painting banners and organizing vigils, events, and processions. I saw women religious and priests accompanying vulnerable families, laboring day and night on the Pastoral Care Campaign.
This is the embodiment of the resurrection. Standing up and rising up together.
On Easter morning, Mary Magdalene heard Jesus and the angel saying, “Do not be afraid.” Courage doesn’t mean the absence of danger or nerves. Nerves diminish, though, when we no longer face them alone. When Tiffany from Our Lady of Africa stands beside me during our actions, I feel it in my body. We support and affirm each other. When Fr. David Inczauskis, SJ, leads a prayer as our team holds hands before another action, our anxiety loosens.
In the Eastern Church, there is an icon of the Anastasis that shows Jesus pulling Adam and Eve up from Hades, with all of humanity behind them. This icon reminds me of the sacred words of Civil Rights leader, Fannie Lou Hamer, “Nobody’s Free Until Everybody’s Free.” Resurrection, in other words, is a collective reality.
We don’t have to wait for resurrection. It’s happening here, now, like the Kin-dom of God. Community organizing is the Resurrection unfolding in the present moment. Everyday people making God’s love real, in tangible and concrete ways, healing unjust systems and social structures and restoring the relational fabric of communities.
In this moment of great political and spiritual turmoil, we are invited to see ourselves as a Resurrected People. Not because the suffering has ended, but because we are already rising in the midst of it.
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