Let me tell you about my home, my community, mi ranchito, mi hogar. It is under attack by people with unmarked cars, assault rifles and masks. They come with no notice, no warrant and with no love. Every day, for weeks, they terrorized the neighborhoods of my dear City of Angels. They have taken people away. They have frightened families. My community lives in fear. My neighbors are so afraid they walk along the backside of the apartment building to throw out the trash, so as to avoid being seen on the street. Many suffer from hunger because they don’t feel safe leaving home to get food. 

José (his name and others in this piece are pseudonyms), who had sold flowers on the same corner for the past 15 years every day, rain or shine, was taken a few weeks ago. His corner is empty. The beautiful flowers that would have adorned our homes lie there on the cold concrete. I saw them and cried. “Where have they taken him,” people asked. No one knows. No one knows where many persons like José are. 

Throughout these events, my heart has been filled with rage and sadness, but also joy. There remains cause for joy at every step one takes. Last week, I got off work and went down to the local laundromat and soon realized I had forgotten my detergent. “Hola mijo, gustas un poco de jabón?,” said the doña next to me, offering some of her soap. “Gracias,” I replied. I put my clothes in the washer and went to the liquor store next door and ordered un burrito de cabeza from Doña Esmeralda. I went back to the laundromat with my burrito and my Coke, and I thought to myself, “This moment is perfect!” The world is burning, and my community is under attack, but how blessed am I to share this moment with the people here. What a seemingly ordinary moment, but how amazing it was.

The people of Los Angeles have continued to resist the ICE raids and the Trump administration with these seemingly ordinary moments. This is because for the poor, for the oppressed, for the marginalized, every moment of life is an act of resistance. Our persecutors seek to destroy us, but the simple fact that we continue to exist is itself a push back against oppression. But my neighbors also do more than this.

I got a call from my best friend, telling me that he got word that ICE was in his family’s neighborhood. I rushed over to meet him; on the way, I saw one young lady with the Mexican flag tied on like a cape. She stood at the corner with a sign raised up high that said, “ICE out of LA!” I felt afraid for her because she was alone. On my way back I again saw the same young lady and began to cry. The entire city had come out to rally behind her. The entire intersection boomed with the sounds of chants and car horns. In the pit of my stomach, I knew we would be O.K. as long as we had each other. 

Across the city people have been rallying and organizing. I have seen neighbors who are undocumented—whose entire family lives in one room, who barely have anything to eat—travel across town to give food to others, who are unable to go outside. Our survival has required a deepening of our communion. My mother, my brother, friends and family, neighbors on my block and throughout the city, are all doing a little part to help one another out.

One amazing way that my community continues to resist oppression and the threat of despair is by fiesta. Fiestas serve not only to resist acts of destruction, but also to vivify a community. Celebrations give people the occasion to step out of the rigidity of control and re-encounter one another through play. This does not mean that fiestas are purely joyful events. Fiestas are like theater performances, with various acts and several characters with overlapping arcs. It is typical to have people show up at a fiesta who have a history of conflict with one another. People show up to fiestas with sorrows, anger, frustrations, laments, and these passions do not necessarily go away; but they become transformed by fiesta. Even shouting out loud in a devastating painful cry is joy. This is because our tears in the midst of joy reveal the complexity of our humanity. And though the tears are still painful, they become human tears when spilled in the midst of human play.

Fiesta, however, is not reducible to big celebrations like weddings or quinceañeras. As Celia Cruz prophetically sang, “¡la vida es un carnaval!” We find fiesta in the everyday, en lo cotidiano—running across the street to get an elote, a neighbor blasting oldies as he washes and waxes his low-rider, ska shows in parking lots, selling tacos on the front lawn, buying tamales from la doña down the block, mariachis singing in laundromats, tíos playing handball in the park, foos coming up on you asking, “Where you from?”, tagging up gentrifying buildings, praying on streets, street skating, saludando. What a powerful tool of resistance it is to rejoice. We cannot let them take this away. We must remember that all the evil in the world does not compare to the beauty of a single dandelion.

My community has built up a united front. But I have struggled to understand the reaction of many of my fellow Catholics. It is a sad thing to learn that those that you commune with, those who share your faith, refuse to take a stance and refuse to engage. True communion requires taking a stance in the face of oppression. To know about these events and to do nothing is a betrayal of our faith and of one another. Too often I have heard Catholics in the past weeks talk about how they have to discern what is right or wrong at the moment, or that it is not the place of the church to engage in politics. My community has no choice but to engage and take a stance. 

There is mystery in the Gospel. And Christ also has called us to live that mystery. How happy you should be to have the chance to suffer in solidarity, to be spit on, to be rejected, to cry. Don’t forget about us. We are your brothers and sisters. Do not be afraid! Christ will save us because he already has. The battle has already been won. This is the faith that we profess!

Tonight, as you pray, ask God to reveal one small thing that we can do. I say “we” because to do good, we need to work in community. You cannot move a mountain by yourself, but together maybe we can.

We ask God to teach us to dream, to love, to see the beauty of the everyday. Help us, God, to see you in every pair of eyes we encounter. You are our love, you are our hope, and all we long for. We ask all this through Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns on heaven and earth, forever and ever. Amen.