50._ Trauma

Peter and the other disciples of Jesus constituted a small group brutally traumatized by the crucifixion. Dispersed, hidden, shamed, demoralized. Destroyed were their dreams and their hopes. They now had to lower to the reality. To return with their families, to their occupations, to continue living. We imagine that many heard the reproach: "I told you that you did not go with that man". Their master had been a deluded, a visionary, a crazy person. Not even was he calm dead and with dignity like a Socrate, but of terrible and shamefaced way, like the worse one of the criminals.

And they that made accounts of their future benefits in the messianic Kingdom, which to the most important positions and the best sites already were distributed, which had trusted being generously compensated for to follow him... how stupid, how utopian, how irresponsible, how useless, had they been! Now they would be persecuted by the powerful authorities of Jerusalem, perhaps even in their same villages of Galilea; perhaps they would be catched by the frightful Roman soldiers and be submitted to torture and until death, also. And all those beautiful doctrines of peace, love, pardon, confidence, of what they served? There was among them no a leader, a successor who could animate them. Peter, the one that had been most decided, had turned out to be a cowardly one; with what face he would watch his companions?