(Originally published in Common Place Quarterley's "Character(s) To Live By"column)
If I chose to hide you away, it is for a reason.
I have brought you to this place.
Drink in the silence. Seek solitude.
Listen to the silence.
It will teach you. It will build strength
Let others share it with you.
It is little to be found elsewhere.
Silence will speak more to you in a day than the world of voices can teach you in a lifetime.
Find silence. Find solitude – and having discovered her riches, bind her to your heart.
Frances J. Roberts
It was a quiet afternoon, and my daughter and I were seated at a bench in the church courtyard. I spied a man approaching us with tattered clothing, a sun-cracked face, greasy hair and a shopping bag overflowing with his belongings. He apologetically asked if he could join us, and I politely agreed. It wasn’t long before I felt uncomfortable, and I pardoned us from the bench. My seven-year-old daughter asked why we had moved, was it because he was dirty and smelly? I was silent. Lord, thank you for the humility of a child!
“Truly, I tell you,” He said, “unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3-4
Silence, by Shusaku Endo¹, is a fictionalised account of historical events and actual persons in seventeenth-century Japan. The story focuses on Sebastian Rodrigues, a missionary priest who went to Japan to find out if his mentor, Christovão Ferreira, had really apostatised during the horrific persecutions of Christian adherents. Father Rodrigues loved God, but he was a proud man, sincere in his faith, but proud of his education, culture and spirituality. At the beginning of his mission, he was disdainful of the Japanese peasants: their abject poverty, humility and childishness. His haughty spirituality reminded me of the clamorous pride that my daughter exposed on that afternoon in the churchyard. Ouch! A pride that rants and raves, silencing the gentle whisper of the Lord.
The Japanese elite were also very proud of their culture and beliefs and tried to silence the threat of the Gospel through forced apostasy, torture and execution. They imprisoned Rodrigues alongside the peasant saints and forced him to make a decision to abandon his faith. A cacophony of doubtful thoughts bombarded him. The “wretched loneliness” of his unsuccessful mission as a priest, the betrayal he experienced, the torture of the saints, and his desire for martyrdom — all these things led him to believe the Lord was silent. “Lord, why are you silent? You still maintain your deep silence in a life like this! You avert your face as though indifferent… Why are you always silent?”
Oh, were it not for the face of Jesus!
“[Rodrigues] from long ago had the habit of imagining the face of Christ in his moments of solitude. And yet since he had been captured...a different sensation filled his breast when 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.” ”
Through this, Rodrigues learned that “Humility is… participation in the life of Jesus” (Andrew Murray). He made a decision that would lead him into a deeper understanding of the sufferings of Christ. With his pride silenced, the voice of God was no longer silent to him.
“For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation.” Psalm 62:1
(The Hebrew word for ‘silence’ in this verse is ‘Dumiyah’. It implies a quiet and trustful waiting and repose from grief and tears).
I haven’t experienced any harrowing trials as these saints did, but this book asked challenging questions I had to answer. Am I willing to step off Ego's Broadway and leave behind the hubbub of patronising Madam ‘Spiritual Pride’; Mr ‘Success’ peddling his trophies; stuck up Miss ‘Pretension’; weary Monsieur ‘People Pleasing’ and wily old ‘Mistrust’? Can I seek the face of Jesus and follow him on a path less-travelled? Am I willing to ‘find silence and bind her to my heart’? Yes!
“To you, dumiyah is praise, O God in Zion.” Psalm 65:1 [Stone/Artscroll Translation]
Rodrigues “loved [the Lord] now in a different way from before. Everything that had taken place until now had been necessary to bring him to this love. ‘Even now I am the last priest in this land. But Our Lord was not silent. Even if he had been silent, my life until this day would have spoken of him.’”
[Unless otherwise stated, all quotations are from Silence by Shusaku Endo.]
¹ I recommend reading this book for the season of lent. The movie is rather harrowing but it is very well made.
Comments