Rev.Tim Byron is a Jesuit priest from Liverpool,who is currently working in the Philippines.In his latest blog, he reflects on a story from the region that he hopes will soon reach the big screen.
That's a paradox, and it can be an extremely painful one: on the face of it, believing and questioning are antithetical. Yet I believe that they go hand in hand. One nourishes the other.
Questioning may lead to great loneliness, but if it co-exists with faith - true faith, abiding faith - it can end in the most joyful sense of communion. It's this painful, paradoxical passage - from certainty to doubt to loneliness to communion - that Endo understands so well, and renders so clearly, carefully and beautifully in Silence."
He writes: 'The history of Christianity in Asia is marked by terrible
suffering and persecution, mixed with power, corruption, ignorance,
prejudice, cultural suspicions, terrible mistakes, acts of great
generosity and sacrifice. Some of the fiercest persecution was in Japan
- after the success of the initial journeys of Jesuit missionary St
Francis Xavier.
The story of the martyrs of Japan is powerful and it
should be known by a wider audience. Well, hopefully it will be thanks
to two men: award-winning Japanese author Shusako Endo and one of the greatest film directors of all time, Martin Scorsese.
Scorsese has announced his next project will be a film based on Endo's classic novel Silence.
In a forward to a recent edition of the novel - Scorsese
explains his fascination:
"How do you tell the story of Christian faith? The difficulty, the crisis, of believing? How do you describe the struggle? ...
Shusaku Endo understood the conflict of faith, the necessity of belief fighting the voice of experience. The voice that always urges the faithful - the questioning faithful - to adapt their beliefs to the world they inhabit, their culture...
"How do you tell the story of Christian faith? The difficulty, the crisis, of believing? How do you describe the struggle? ...
Shusaku Endo understood the conflict of faith, the necessity of belief fighting the voice of experience. The voice that always urges the faithful - the questioning faithful - to adapt their beliefs to the world they inhabit, their culture...
That's a paradox, and it can be an extremely painful one: on the face of it, believing and questioning are antithetical. Yet I believe that they go hand in hand. One nourishes the other.
Questioning may lead to great loneliness, but if it co-exists with faith - true faith, abiding faith - it can end in the most joyful sense of communion. It's this painful, paradoxical passage - from certainty to doubt to loneliness to communion - that Endo understands so well, and renders so clearly, carefully and beautifully in Silence."
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