In the face of utter disorientation at the collapse of all that is familiar

Click on this title for a great reflection from Matt Emerson, 

Easter Season and Mysterium Tremendum

James Alison in his book, Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination does not tread lightly when it comes to describing where Christian hope comes from.  According to Alison,

The stone put aside and the absence of the corpse were not in the first instance a motive for rejoicing, but for terror. Terror because what had happened was quite outside anything that could be expected. . . . Terror because now there was no security, no rules, nothing normal could be trusted in.

“Whatever Christian hope is,” Alison concludes, “it begins in terror and utter disorientation in the face of the collapse of all that is familiar and well known.”

Shock, fear, and silence: These are the primal emotions that greet the first evidence of eternal life.