Refiner’s Fire: Can There Be Faith in Betrayal?

Shusaku Endo’s strange and wonderful novel asks some uncomfortable questions.

In silence, Shusaku Endo’s unsettling novel about martyrdom, the means of betrayal was the symbol of hope: the fumie, an image of Christ placed at the Judas’s feet. To trample on the sacred visage meant life—but at the renouncement of faith.

This is the novel’s spiritual backdrop. Set into motion by the apostasy in 1633 of an experienced and highly respected Jesuit missionary, Christovao Ferreira, the book becomes a spiritual odyssey of a former student of Ferreira’s, Sebastian Rodrigues, who goes to Japan as a missionary “to find out the truth about our teacher.” Once there, however, Rodrigues quickly begins to unravel the truth about himself, about his relationship to Christ, and about his relationship to those to whom he is sent. That he loves Christ above all else is certain from the beginning, but that he will somehow betray that love also becomes agonizingly clear.

When three hostages are to be taken from a Japanese village suspected of containing Christians, one asks Rodrigues: “ ‘Father, if we are ordered to trample on the fumie.…’ Mokichi, head hanging, mumbled the words as though he was talking to himself. ‘It’s not only a matter that concerns us. If we don’t trample, everyone in the village will be cross-examined. What are we to do?’ ”

Rodrigues, in his great pity for these men, would have them trample the face of Christ to save their lives just as later, after his capture, he would have his fellow priest, Garrpe, apostatize (he does not) in order to save the lives of three Japanese Christians.

“ ‘Trample! Trample!’ I shouted. But immediately I realized that I had uttered words that should never have been on my lips.”

Mokichi and the second hostage, Ichizo, do not apostatize and die cruel deaths; but the third hostage, Kichijiro, does and even betrays Father Rodrigues.

“ ‘Father, forgive me!’ Still kneeling on the bare ground Kichijiro cried out in a voice choked with tears. ‘I am weak. I am not a strong person like Mokichi and Ichizo.’ ”

Silence is about Father Rodrigues’s own weakness and his strength, his awful pride in presuming to identify himself with Christ during his early captivity, and the awful suffering he endures when finally he must place his own foot on the fumie.

Silence is also about Father Rodrigues’s achievement of the true nature of Christ, manifested in his capacity to love and forgive the unlovely, Judas-like Kichijiro. The means for that achievement occurs when Rodrigues comes before the fumie in order to save three Japanese who are suffering because of his refusal. The narrator shifts to the present tense: “The fumie is now at his feet.”

“This face is deeply ingrained in my soul—the most beautiful, the most precious thing in the world has been living in my heart. And now with this foot I am going to trample on it.”

Ferreira, his old teacher, encourages him; the Japanese interpreter urges him on: “It is only a formality. What do formalities matter?… Only go through with the exterior form of trampling.” Rodrigues acts: “The priest raises his foot. In it he feels a dull, heavy pain. This is no mere formality. He will now trample on what he has considered the most beautiful thing in his life, on what he has believed most pure, on what is filled with the ideals and the dreams of man. How his foot aches! And then the Christ in bronze speaks: … ‘Trample! Trample! I more than anyone know of the pain in your foot. Trample! It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into this world. It was to share men’s pain that I carried my cross.’

“The priest placed his foot on the fumie. Dawn broke. And far in the distance the cock crew.”

God’s silence is broken. In the last analysis Rodrigues tramples because Christ commands him to. His betrayal is thus an act of submission and obedience to Christ, a real act of love as well. Nevertheless, because of his act of public betrayal he can no longer identify himself with Christ, as he has done in his pride throughout his imprisonment and suffering. He must now identify himself with Kichijiro, and thus learn the real extent of Christ’s love, which understands and embraces even Judas.

“ ‘Lord, I resented your silence.’

“ ‘I was not silent. I suffered beside you.

“ ‘But you told Judas to go away: What thou doest do quickly. What happened to Judas?’

“ ‘I did not say that. Just as I told you to step on the plaque, so I told Judas to do what he was going to do. For Judas was in anguish as you are now.’ ”

One of the many virtues of Endo’s novel for Christian readers is that we too have a stake in the action, in the betrayals. We live our “blessed lives of faith,” as Rodrigues reflects before his capture, because we were not born in an age of persecution. Yet the “letters” written by Rodrigues and used to tell his story are addressed to us, his fellow seminarians, as it were. He is our brother in Christ, and what happens to him happens also to us. We too are brought before the fumie (thus the narrator shifts to the present tense); we too in our comfortable, easy lives must make that terrible choice.

And we choose, I think, like Kichijiro, like our brother Rodrigues. We too are betrayers of Christ, like the disciples in Endo’s interpretation, always striking a deal with the ruling powers. Yet betrayal is not the end, for once we see that weakness, that heart of darkness, that treachery in ourselves, then we are finally capable of comprehending the maternal love of Christ that embraces us in spite of our treachery, that embraces us in our anguish. Then we too can love and forgive as Christ does.

Shusaku Endo was born into a culture antithetical to Christianity, yet, when he was 11, his mother, who had become “a fervent, strict-observing Catholic,” had him baptized (Schuchert’s “Translators Preface” to A Life of Jesus). The tension between the Christian faith and Japanese culture in his own life makes his voice unique within the Christian community. He finds the love of Jesus in His compassion for the poor, the lonely, the sick and suffering, the weak, the guilty. The depth of that love reveals itself fully as the dying Jesus forgives from the cross, all the disciples who Endo believes have betrayed Jesus to save their own lives.

His many novels are available in good English translations. Encountering in Silence his vision of Christ as the one who came to be trampled ought to be a powerful and unsettling experience for any Christian.

“ ‘Father, I betrayed you. I trampled on the picture of Christ,’ said Kichijiro with tears. ‘In this world are the strong and the weak. The strong never yield to torture, and they go to Paradise; but what about those, like myself, who are born weak, those who, when tortured and ordered to trample on the sacred image.…’ ”

Rodrigues’s answer to Kichijiro is indicative of the depth of Rodrigues’s own understanding of Christ:

“ ‘There are neither the strong nor the weak. Can anyone say that the weak do not suffer more than the strong?’ ” Rodrigues hears Kichijiro’s confession for the final time, though he is formally an apostate priest, gives absolution, and sends him away in peace.

“No doubt his fellow priests would condemn his act as sacrilege; but even if he was betraying them, he was not betraying his Lord. He loved him 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.’ ”

Dr. Startzman is associate professor of English at Berea College, Berea, Kentucky.

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