“Sin, he reflected, is not what it is usually thought to be; it is not to steal and tell lies. Sin is for one man to walk brutally over the life of another and to be quite oblivious of the wounds he has left behind.”
― Shūsaku Endō, quote from Silence
“Christ did not die for the good and beautiful. It is easy enough to die for the good and beautiful; the hard thing is to die for the miserable and corrupt.”
― Shūsaku Endō, quote from Silence
“No matter what the circumstances, no man can completely escape from vanity.”
― Shūsaku Endō, quote from Silence
“but our Lord was not silent. Even if he had been silent, my life until this day would have spoken of Him.”
― Shūsaku Endō, quote from Silence
“When you suffer, I suffer with you. To the end I am close to you.”
― Shūsaku Endō, quote from Silence
“Trample! Trample! It is to be trampled on by you that I am here. ”
― Shūsaku Endō, quote from Silence
“Lord, why are you silent? Why are you always silent...?”
― Shūsaku Endō, quote from Silence
“It is easy enough to die for the good and beautiful; the hard thing is to die for the miserable and corrupt.”
― Shūsaku Endō, quote from Silence
“But pity was not action. It was not love. Pity, like passion, was no more than a kind of instinct.”
― Shūsaku Endō, quote from Silence
“I do not believe that God has given us this trial to not purpose. I know that the day will come when we will clearly understand why this persecution with all it's sufferings has been bestowed upon us -- for everything that Our Lord does is for our good. And yet, even as I write these words I feel the oppressive weight in my heart of those last stammering words of Kichijiro in the morning of his departure: "Why has Deus Sama imposed this suffering on us?" and then the resentment in those eyes that he turned upon me. "Father", he had said "what evil have we done?"
I suppose I should simply cast from my mind these meaningless words of the coward; yet why does his plaintive voice pierce my breast with tall 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. The silence of God. 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; the walls of churches have fallen down; and in the face of this terrible and merciless sacrifice offered up to Him, God has remained silent.”
― Shūsaku Endō, quote from Silence
“Man is a strange being. He always has a feeling somewhere in his heart that whatever the danger he will pull through. It's just like when on a rainy day you imagine the faint rays of the sun shining on a distant hill.”
― Shūsaku Endō, quote from Silence
“There are neither the strong nor the weak. Can anyone say that the weak do not suffer more than the strong?”
― Shūsaku Endō, quote from Silence
“We priests are in some ways a sad group of men. Born into the world to render service to mankind, there is no one more wretchedly alone than the priest who does not measure up to his task.”
― Shūsaku Endō, quote from Silence
“I did pray. I kept on Praying. But prayer did nothing to alleviate their suffering.”
― Shūsaku Endō, quote from Silence
“The reason why darkness terrifying for us, he reflected, is that there remains in us the instinctive fear the primitive man had when there was as yet no light.”
― Shūsaku Endō, quote from Silence
“What do I want to say? I myself do not quite understand. Only that today, when for the glory of God Mokichi and Ichizo moaned, suffered and died, I cannot bear the monotonous sound of the dark sea gnawing at the shore. Behind the depressing silence of this sea, the silence of God....the feeling that while men raise their voices in anguish God remains with folded arms, silent.”
― Shūsaku Endō, quote from Silence
“In order to pile weakness upon weakness he was trying to drag others along the path that he himself had walked.”
― Shūsaku Endō, quote from Silence
“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.”
― Shūsaku Endō, quote from Silence
“Prayer does nothing to alleviate suffering.”
― Shūsaku Endō, quote from Silence
“I, too, stood on the sacred image. For a moment this foot was on his face. It was on the face of the man who has been ever in my thoughts, on the face that was before me on the mountains, in my wanderings, in prison, on the best and most beautiful face that any man can ever know, on the face of him whom I have always longed to love. Even now that face is looking at me with eyes of pity from the plaque rubbed flat by many feet. « Trample ! » said those compassionate eyes. « Trample ! Your foot suffers in pain ; it must suffer like all the feet that have stepped on this plaque. But that pain alone is enough. I understand your pain and your suffering. It is for that reason that I am here. »
« Lord, I resented your silence. »
« I was not silent. I suffered beside you. »”
― Shūsaku Endō, quote from Silence
“Behind the depressing silence of the sea, the silence of God …. the feeling that while men raise their voices in anguish God remains with folded arms, silent.”
― Shūsaku Endō, quote from Silence
“They were martyred. 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. This was the splendid martyrdom I had often seen in my dreams. But the martyrdom of the Japanese Christians I now describe to you was no such glorious thing. What a miserable and painful business it was!”
― Shūsaku Endō, quote from Silence
“I tell you the truth - for a long, long time these farmers have worked like horses and cattle; and like horses and cattle they have died. The reason our religion has penetrated this territory like water flowing into dry earth is that it has given this group of people a human warmth they never previously knew. For the first time they have met men who treated them like human beings. It was the human kindness and charity of the fathers that touched their hearts.”
― Shūsaku Endō, quote from Silence
“كان ذلك هو البحر الذى اكتسح دون هوادة جثتى موكيشى و ايشيزو البحر الذى أبتلعهما البحر الذى أمتد عقب حتفهما بلا انتهاء بملامح لم تعرف التغيير شأن البحر كان الله صامتا, تطاول صمته”
― Shūsaku Endō, quote from Silence
“What emotion had filled the breast of Christ when he ordered away the man who was to betray him for thirty pieces of silver. Was it anger? or resentment? Or did these words arise from his love? If it was anger, then at this instant Christ excluded from salvation this man alone of all the men in the world; and then our Lord allowed one man to fall into eternal damnation. But it could not be so. Christ wanted to save even Judas. If not, he would have never made him one of his disciples. And yet why did Christ not stop him when he began to slip from the path of righteousness? This was a problem I had not understood even as a seminarian......If it is not blasphemous to say so, I have the feeling that Judas was no more than the unfortunate puppet for the glory of that drama which was the life and death of Christ.”
― Shūsaku Endō, quote from Silence
“His pity for them had been overwhelming; but pity was not action.”
― Shūsaku Endō, quote from Silence
“...but what grieved him most was his inability to love these people as Christ had loved them.”
― Shūsaku Endō, quote from Silence
“Stupefied he gazed at the old man who, naïve as a child, returned his glance still rubbing his hands. How could he have recognized one who so utterly betrayed all his expectations? The man whom Valignano had called a devil, who had made the missionaries apostatize one by one--until now he had envisaged the face of this man as pale and crafty. But here before his very eyes sat this understanding, seemingly good, meek man.”
― Shūsaku Endō, quote from Silence
“If we did not believe that truth is universal, why should so many missionaries endure these hardships? It is precisely because truth is common to all countries and all times that we call it truth. If a true doctrine were not true alike in Portugal and Japan we could not call it true.”
― Shūsaku Endō, quote from Silence
“As for me, perhaps I am so fascinated by his face because the Scriptures make no mention of it...all it's details are left to my imagination.”
― Shūsaku Endō, quote from Silence
Shūsaku Endō
Born place: in Tokyo, Japan
Born date March 27, 1923
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