I turn to the image of the stone that the women found rolled away from the tomb on Easter morning. Each of us carries a stone. An enormous boulder placed at the entrance of the soul, blocking oxygen, gripping us in a vice of cold, shutting out every ray of light, cutting us off from one another. It is the stone of loneliness, of poverty, of illness, of hatred, of despair, of sin. We are sealed tombs.
Each with its own mark of death. May Easter be for all of us the rolling away of the stone, the end of nightmares, the beginning of light, the spring of new relationships. And if each of us, having emerged from our tomb, works to remove the stone from the tomb beside us, the miracle of the earthquake that marked Christ's first Easter will finally happen again. Easter is the feast of stones rolled away.
It is the feast of the earthquake.
Tonino Bello, Bishop, 2007