The New Wine Press vol 25 no 8 April 2017 | Page 12

Roll Away Your Stone
by Tim Deveney, Precious Blood Volunteers Director
For Reflection Matthew 28:1-10
In my previous job with Unbound I traveled a lot.
My position there had me out on the road working
with the priests who invited people to sponsor. One
of those weekends I was able to spend with Fr. Sam,
who was a priest from the Archdiocese of Baltimore.
Fr. Sam had spent much of his life as a priest working
and living in a rough neighborhood in Baltimore. For
those who have watched the hbo series, The Wire,
the cityscapes he lived in were similar to what was
portrayed in the series. During his sermon that week-
end Fr. Sam described a message on a church sign in
Baltimore that read: “We are an Easter people living
in a Good Friday world.”
We have Good Fridays all around us. All we have to
do is look at the nightly news where the headlines tell
us about the terrible things humans do to each other.
There are refugees fleeing terrorism in Sudan, hun-
ger in Somalia, bombs being dropped on innocent
10 • The New Wine Press • April 2017
civilians by military aircraft in Yemen, and constant
shelling by various armed factions fighting in Syria
and Iraq. Although progress has been made in the
last 20 years, in the United States we still have persis-
tent problems of violent crimes, including murder. It
is indeed a Good Friday world.
All of us have lived Good Friday when we have lost
people who are close to us. We know the overwhelm-
ing emotions that accompany grief: fear; sadness;
anger. The emotions that come out of grief, especially
right after death happens, are some of the rawest we
can have as human beings. The nights following my
dad’s death three years ago are still some of the most
intense experiences of pain in my life.
The women at Jesus’ tomb had to be feeling all of
these emotions, especially when their friend, who
was in the prime of his life, was sentenced to death
and executed by an unjust government with the
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