![]() ![]() Is this really the voice of Christ as he passes by the scene? I cannot think so. ![]() It was to share men’s pain that I carried my cross.’” Trample! It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into this world. As soon as Rodrigues steps upon the fumie we are told that “far in the distance the cock crew.” But then what are we to make of what Rodrigues hears just before? “And then the Christ in bronze speaks to the priest: ‘Trample! Trample! I more than anyone know of the pain in your foot. In certain ways, Endo signals that Rodrigues is a simple traitor. If only he will step on the fumie, Rodrigues is told, then not only will his own persecution end, but also that of the Christian converts hanging in the “pit.” The authorities assure Rodrigues that they are only asking for an external sign of renunciation they do not care what is in his heart. In persecuting Rodrigues, the Japanese authorities are cunning in making him witness the horrific physical suffering of Japanese Christian converts. What, then, is Endo trying to say about the silent Christ who passes by at the moment of the martyr’s death? Is Silence a simple story of decline and fall, or does Endo find a deeper mystery in Rodrigues’ apostasy? The scene of Endo’s novel, however, is 17th-century Japan rather than China, and his missionaries young Portuguese Jesuits who set out to keep the light of Christianity burning in a country which, after initially embracing Christianity through the efforts of Saint Francis Xavier, now has outlawed it.īut a more substantial difference between Sister Marie de Saint-Nathalie and the protagonist of Endo’s tale, Father Sebastian Rodrigues, is that Rodrigues chooses, in a moment of great anguish, to trample on the fumie, a bronze image of Christ, and thus renounce his faith. This silence of Jesus who passes by at the moment of persecution is the theme of Shusaku Endo’s elegantly written, gripping, and much-acclaimed 1966 novel, Silence (a film adaptation of which, directed by Martin Scorsese, will appear in 2015). Sister Marie de Sainte-Nathalie, a Franciscan Missionary of Mary who was beheaded with her companions in 1899, was heard to say in going to her death: “Do not be afraid. This past Wednesday, July 9, was the Feast of Saint Augustine Zhao and Companions, a group of 120 Christian priests, nuns, seminarians, and lay people martyred in China from 1648 to 1930.
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