According to Tedeschi and Calhoun, trauma is a person-event complex that threatens the existing ‘schema’ that people have in their mind. After a prolonged process of ‘rumination’, the people might not want to change their schema and thus experience PTSD. Alternatively, if they accommodate or assimilate the experience into their schema, then the result is coping or resilience respectively. On the other hand, if they ‘integrate’ the adverse experience into their schema by reframing it then the outcome is wisdom.
Basing itself on Tedeschi and Calhoun’s model of posttraumatic growth, the present paper reads the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus as a process of dealing with a traumatic experience – the death of the Messiah and the disappearance of his body. Jesus listens to their version of the story, offers them an alternative framework. The disciples’ “eyes are opened” because they are ready to alter their schema about the messiah – may be Jesus is not just a messiah.
The end result is that they return to Jerusalem to give hope to a traumatised community – one of the signs of posttraumatic wisdom.
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