If the only Jesuit you ever met was a character in a work of fiction in a library collection, what would this individual tell you about Jesuit life?
In this series, IgNation blogger Kevin Burns, who is not a Jesuit, takes a look at some of the works that come up in a large urban public library when he entered the search term "Jesuit" and filtered it through the genre of "Fiction". The novels that popped up include some familiar names and some not so familiar Jesuits.
This week: Sebastian Rodrigues S.J., the main character in Shusaku Endo’s Silence
Just as Père Christophe in Joseph Boyden’s The Orenda is modelled after one of the 17th century Jesuit martyrs (Jean de Brébeuf), so too is Sebastian Rodrigues (Giuseppe Chiara). Père Christophe and Sebastian Rodrigues are fictional Jesuit contemporaries who engaged in dangerous missionary activity. In the case of the Portuguese-born Rodrigues, his missionary work takes him to Japan and the novel does not address his biography or formation, only his experiences when despite the advice of one of his superiors, he opts to journey there. Both novels address the deadly collision of culture when missionary zeal encounters traditional beliefs and practices.
Silence is in two parts, the first takes the form of letters (“relations” as it were) written by Rodrigues and the second part assumes the voice of a narrator commenting on this character and his actions.
Early in part one, we learn this about Rodrigues: “I feel great love for that face. I am always fascinated by the face of Christ just like a man fascinated by the face of his beloved.” (p. 47)
He defines his sense of priesthood through his missionary commitment: “Never have I felt so deeply how meaningful is the life of a priest. These Japanese Christians are like a ship lost in a storm without a chart. I see them without a single priest or brother to encourage and console, gradually losing hope and wandering bewildered in the darkness.” (p. 60)
Aware of the great risks he faces, Rodrigues relies on somewhat of a hunch about human nature. “To tell you the truth, my own feeling is that we will not be captured. Man is a strange being. He always has a feeling somewhere in his heart that whatever the danger he will pull through… In our little hut I have a feeling of eternal safety. I don’t know why this should be. It’s a strange feeling.” (p 67)
Rodrigues believes that Japanese peasants suffer under Buddhism and that he offers new hope. “These people who work and live and die like beasts find they can cast away the fetters that bind them.” (p. 79)
The challenges he faces in Japan are at once life-threatening and theological: “I know the day will come when we will clearly understand why this persecution with all its sufferings has been bestowed upon us – for everything that Our Lord does is for our good.” (p. 96) And: “Strange to say, I now felt no anxiety, no fear. The only thing that kept repeating itself quietly in my mind was: Why this? Why?” (p.110)
In part two we learn from the narrator how Rodrigues endures physical pain, humiliation, and the pressure to renounce his beliefs. “He simply closed his eyes and thought of the Stations of the Cross, one by one, now being prayed at some monastery; and he kept moving his dry tongue as he tried to mutter the words of the prayers.” (p. 163) And: [B]ehind his closed eyelids he would pass through every scene in the life of Christ. From childhood the face of Christ had been for him the fulfillment of his every dream and ideal…Even in its moments of terrible torture this face had never lost its beauty.” (p. 170)
Like his fellow missionary Jesuits around the world, he is compelled to leave some kind of “relation” or record of his experiences so as not to be forgotten. This is why “he made himself a quill from a chicken’s wing which had fallen in the courtyard, and began to write down all his reminiscences since coming to Japan. He did not know, of course, if what he wrote would ever reach Portugal.” (p. 174)
He is able to pray even when in great physical pain. “The words of the prayer fell from his lips like pebbles and as he continued they came only with great difficulty. He was distracted by the tormenting pain of the rope which bit into his wrists whenever he moved his body, but what grieved him most was his inability to love these people as Christ had loved them.” (p. 251)
Rodrigues and his fellow Jesuit missionaries are ordered to renounce their faith publicly by stamping on a fumi-e, a large medallion-like image of Jesus. At his darkest moment he returns to the core of his vocation and his belief as “the face of that man rose behind his closed eyelids. Now in the darkness, that face seemed close beside him. At first it was silent, but pierced him with a glance that was filled with sorrow. And then it seemed to speak to him: ‘When you suffer, I suffer with you. To the end I am close to you.’” (p. 256)
In the midst of this anguish he has a breakthrough about his role as a Jesuit priest as he “drew deep down into his bosom the life of these people who surrounded him. Then suddenly there rose up within him a longing to talk to others, to be like other people, to hear the words of other men, to plunge into the daily life of men.” (p. 225)
Whether that will be possible or not is the subject of the rest of the novel.
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The edition used in this piece is the 1978 paperback Quartet Editions version, translated by the Belfast born translator, theologian, author – and Jesuit – William Johnston (1925 – 2010).
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Note: This summer in Taiwan, Martin Scorsesse will direct a feature film adaption of Silence with Liam Neeson and Andrew Garfied.
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Next in Keyword: Jesuit, Genre: Fiction – Mark Frutkin’s Fabrizio’s Return
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Note to the Reader:
This series represents a tiny selection from a wide-range of possibilities. IgNation invites readers to describe a Jesuit character they have encountered in fiction. Tell us about that character in 500 words or less and send your article to pungente@sympatico.ca [1]