Takeaway: A perfect book to read Maundy Thursday and Good Friday
Silence is a difficult book. It is not difficult to read but it is difficult because of the complex picture of Christianity that it presents. I can understand why so many people love and many others find it near heresy.
Silence was written in 1966 by Shusaku Endo. Shusaku Endo was a Japanese Catholic and wrote this historical novel about the 17th century persecution of Christianity in Japan.
The story follows a Portuguese Jesuit Priest that sneaks into Japan to minister to the local persecuted Christian community and find out if it is true that his former mentor Father Ferreira has committed apostasy (denied Christ.)
Japan is one of the historical examples of where the ‘blood of martyrdom’ was not the ‘seed of the church’ as Tertullian put it. The Christian community in Japan grew quickly after Francis Xavier (founder of the Jesuits) first brought the message of Christianity there in 1549. There were several hundred thousand Christians in Japan by the time the first persecutions started.
In 1597, 26 Christians were crucified. Later persecutions occurred in 1613, 1630 and 1632. But after the Shimabara Rebellion in 1638, where a peasant revolt was put down (many of whom were Catholic Christians), the ban on Christianity was strongly enforced.
Silence is set in 1638 just after the Shimabara Rebellion. Father Rodrigues and his companion Father Garrpe find a village of Christians and secretly minister to them. But soon they are discovered and escape so they will not bring problems to the village. Their escape is too late and several villagers are tortured and killed. The priest split up to reach more people and hopefully be harder to find.
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Takeaway: Pregnancy, as spiritual discipline and holy work, is often not as valued in the Evangelical world as it should be. This book does much to rectify that.