But the martyrdom of the Japanese Christians I now describe to you was no such glorious thing. This was the splendid martyrdom I had often seen in my dreams. But what a martyrdom! I had long read about martyrdom in the lives of the saints - how the souls of the martyrs had gone home to Heaven, how they had been filled with glory in Paradise, how the angels had blown trumpets. As the novel progresses, the theme of silence of God will become all-consuming. Yet his words have affected the young missionary because they speak to an issue he has been slowly coming to terms with. ![]() This is revealed in the beginning of the second paragraph: he feels he should just be able to "cast from my mind" Kichijiro's sentiments. Rodrigues has not yet seen so much suffering that he is convinced of God's silence. He has seen so much suffering and heard of even more, since the Christians in Japan began to be persecuted and forced to apostatize under pain of death. This quote heralds the beginning of Rodrigues's questioning the existence of God. This was the problem that lay behind the plaintive question of Kichijiro. ![]() Already twenty years have passed since the persecution broke out the black soil of Japan has been filled with the lament of so many Christians the red blood of priests has flowed profusely and in the face of this terrible and merciless sacrifice offered up to Him, God has remained silent. I supposed I should simply cast from my mind these meaningless words of the coward yet why does his plaintive voice pierce my breast with all the pain of a sharp needle? Why has Our Lord imposed this torture and this persecution on poor Japanese peasants? No, Kichijiro was trying to express something different, something even more sickening. 'Father', he has said, 'what even have we done?' And yet, even as I write these words I feel the oppressive weight in my heart of those last stammering words of Kichijiro on the morning of his departure: 'Why has Deus Sama imposed this suffering upon us?' And then the resentment in those eyes that he turned upon me. I know that the day will come when we will clearly understand why this persecution with all it sufferings has been bestowed upon us - for everything that Our Lord does is for our good. I do not believe that God has given us this trial to no purpose. In this quote, Rodrigues has not yet lost hope in God's existence, so he sees his baptism of a small Japanese peasant baby as the kind of difficult work that Christ would have wanted his followers to pursue. But if God remains silent - if God does not care, or does not exist - then these peasants are living a hard life that will lead to nothing but the void of death. They are saving the very souls that Christ died for. If God exists, then the missionaries are doing the most important work in the world. This quote reveals the two sides of Rodrigues's battle with his life as a missionary amidst great suffering. ![]() It is easy enough to die for the good and beautiful the hard thing is to die for the miserable and corrupt - this is the realization that came home to me acutely at that time. But Christ did not die for the good and beautiful. ![]() This child also would grow up like its parents and grandparents to eke out a miserable existence face to face with the black sea in this cramped and desolate land it, too, would live like a beast, and like a beast it would die.
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