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Still, small, silence
Thursday, March 2, 2017
Jesus said, “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. What profit is there for one to gain the whole world yet lose himself?”  — From Luke 9
In his seventeenth century outdoor prison cell, Father Rodriguez listens to the moans of his three Japanese friends. Their torture comes because of his unwillingness to place his foot firmly on a stone embossed with the face of Christ and renounce Jesus. His own cross, his cruel and unusual punishment, consists simply of watching and listening to his friends bear the crosses they’ve been given.
Or is this in fact his cross at all?  His former confessor, Ferreira, now turns accuser. “You make yourself more important than them. You are preoccupied with your own salvation. You refuse to help them! It’s because you dread to betray the Church. You dread to be the dregs of the Church, like me.”
Rodriguez is trapped in his unknowing. No certainty has been left to his finely tortured mind. In Shusaku Endo’s masterpiece, Silence, he allows himself to be led by his once-and-former-hero onto a spiritual cliff he never imagined. He remembers his presence at other moments of torture and death.
A great shadow passed over his soul like that of the wings of a bird flying over the mast of a ship. When the misty rain floated over the sea, God had been silent. When the one-eyed man had been killed beneath the blazing rays of the sun, he had said nothing. Why is God continually silent while those groaning voices go on?
Ferreira implores him, “Is your way of acting love? A priest ought to live in imitation of Christ. If Christ were here …”
Yes. What would Jesus do? In his own still darkness, with no confident dogma rising up to protect them, God refuses relief. Only silence.
But he still breathes, his life continues. This martyrdom does not include death. So he can only step out of the boat, and see what happens next.
In this fierce seascape, where unknowing is all I know, God reminds me I have been made in his image, as a creator-in-obedience, and invites me to listen more deeply than I have before. Not for what’s outside, but what’s in the center of me, in the place where only God resides and whose walls cannot be breached.
When this contemplation precedes my action, God says, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” And this cross carries me beyond the reach of vultures into skies of blue.
I remember that “obedire” means “to listen,” Lord, but even so, I cannot require that you speak. That is not my place. In the great and mighty wind, in the earthquake, in King Neb’s fire, I might hear only silence. What am I to do then? Wait? Wait for you? Listen longer? Trust the whispers? I can’t be sure it’s you, Lord, can I? Oh Lord, show me how to pray.
