Beyond the Catastrophe

Abstract

Christians of whatever tradition cannot endure a total impasse in human destiny. Individual deaths and huge disasters alike require a point of release beyond which the redeeming power of God intervenes and makes sense of all the horrors and injustices men have to endure. Even in the tragic non-Christian tradition, death and bereavement are not engulfed in total silence and meaninglessness. The lamentations for the dead and the tears of the mourners cease to be merely cries of pain when a door to the unknown is opened. Even outside the Christian claims, from the Epic of Gilgamesh down to Virgil, the disasters, frightful as they are, do not close the vision to some sort of continuance. For the most part even that continuance is dark, for the underworld of shades is not a place of light, but the immortal nature of the heroes shares something of the divine. Dante in the Hell of the Divine Comedy has many unrepentant heroes, but Virgil himself is a guide through the realm of despair. There is a universal way to the stars.