|
5e68458
|
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 |
|
a8bf0be
|
When you suffer, I suffer with you. To the end I am close to you.
|
|
|
Shūsaku Endō |
|
e1aaa56
|
but our Lord was not silent. Even if he had been silent, my life until this day would have spoken of Him.
|
|
|
Shūsaku Endō |
|
f6e29ec
|
No matter what the circumstances, no man can completely escape from vanity.
|
|
|
Shūsaku Endō |
|
c8b7a5e
|
Lord, why are you silent? Why are you always silent...?
|
|
|
Shūsaku Endō |
|
6c07286
|
At the core of her senseless actions, she vaguely perceived that she yearned for something. A something that would provide her with a sure sense of fulfillment. But she could not fathom what that something might be.
|
|
spiritual
life
yearning
purpose
|
Shūsaku Endō |
|
afd931a
|
It is easy enough to die for the good and beautiful; the hard thing is to die for the miserable and corrupt.
|
|
|
Shūsaku Endō |
|
370f4cd
|
But pity was not action. It was not love. Pity, like passion, was no more than a kind of instinct.
|
|
|
Shūsaku Endō |
|
c5cad4c
|
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 |
|
9be7fd9
|
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 suf..
|
|
doubt
persecution
|
Shūsaku Endō |
|
9426585
|
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 ! ..
|
|
silence
shusaku-endo
|
Shūsaku Endō |
|
5473bdb
|
There are neither the strong nor the weak. Can anyone say that the weak do not suffer more than the strong?
|
|
|
Shūsaku Endō |
|
8723437
|
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 |
|
c6581f2
|
To be a saint or a man of too good a nature in today's pragmatic world, with everyone out to get the other fellow, was equivalent to being a fool, wasn't it?
|
|
pragmatism
|
Shūsaku Endō |
|
5ee4574
|
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 |
|
f07caf4
|
I did pray. I kept on Praying. But prayer did nothing to alleviate their suffering.
|
|
silence
prayer
|
Shūsaku Endō |
|
38955ff
|
When you sail, don't Pull up the anchor weeping. Be a man, do it laughing...
|
|
|
Shūsaku Endō |
|
e88f563
|
Prayer does nothing to alleviate suffering.
|
|
|
Shūsaku Endō |
|
2a632dd
|
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 |
|
8303981
|
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 |
|
1ee350a
|
The seeds of salvation are buried in every act of evil.
|
|
good
salvation
|
Shūsaku Endō |
|
0ad6440
|
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.
|
|
silence
|
Shūsaku Endō |
|
00ba7c8
|
In order to pile weakness upon weakness he was trying to drag others along the path that he himself had walked.
|
|
|
Shūsaku Endō |
|
4454453
|
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 |
|
5354c59
|
People are linked together by enmity than by love.
|
|
love
enmity
|
Shūsaku Endō |
|
7a2e384
|
The sound of darkness was certainly intricately linked to the sense of being alone but unrelated to this was the sound of the palpitations of men and women experiencing the sense of utter solitude. There was no doubt about it. This was a sound audible only on evenings such as this.
|
|
solitude
|
Shūsaku Endō |
|
4a3df85
|
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 to..
|
|
|
Shūsaku Endō |
|
a4ca514
|
kn dhlk hw lbHr ldh~ ktsH dwn hwd@ jtht~ mwkysh~ w yshyzw lbHr ldh~ 'btl`hm lbHr ldh~ 'mtd `qb Htfhm bl nth bmlmH lm t`rf ltGyyr sh'n lbHr kn llh Smt, tTwl Smth
|
|
|
Shūsaku Endō |
|
5ed1e44
|
And yet, rather than this I know that my Lord is different from the God that is preached in the churches.
|
|
|
Shūsaku Endō |
|
75781a1
|
Trample! It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into this world. It was to share men's pain that I carried my cross.
|
|
faith
love
|
Shūsaku Endō |
|
640d6f6
|
Not all men are handsome and strong. There are some who are cowards from birth. There are some who are weak by nature. There are even some who cry easily. But for such a man, a man both weak and cowardly, to bear the burden of his weakness and struggle valiantly to live a beautiful life-- that's what I call great. The reason I'm so fond of Gaston is not because he has a strong will or a good head. Rather it's because, weakling and coward th..
|
|
strength
life
inspirational
weakness
|
Shūsaku Endō |
|
11e3b64
|
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 |
|
16526de
|
Stupefied he gazed at the old man who, naive 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 |
|
fccb88a
|
The wisdom of peasants shows itself in their ability to pretend that they are fools.
|
|
|
Shūsaku Endō |
|
5231043
|
No! !No hay tal cosa!" -negaba con la cabeza-. "Si Dios no existiera, el hombre no podria soportar la monotonia de ese mar, esa frialdad siniestra...". "Pero si por un imposible... Solo es un imposible, por supuesto..." -Ahora era otra voz la que retumbaba en un rincon profundo de mi ser- "Si, por un imposible, Dios no existiera...". Era una fantasia aterradora. Si Dios no existiera, !que ridiculo resultaba todo! Si no existiera, !que drama..
|
|
|
Shūsaku Endō |
|
5a6ff0d
|
To help others is the way of Buddha and the teaching of Christianity - in this point the two religions are the same. What matters is weather or not you walk the path of truth." "That is not God. It is like a butterfly caught in a spider's web. At first it is certainly a butterfly, but the next day only the externals, the wings and the trunk, are those of a butterfly; it has lost it's true reality and has become a skeleton." --
|
|
|
Shūsaku Endō |
|
9a0b7fb
|
At night as he lay in bed with his eyes closed listening to the song of the turtledove in the trees, behind his closed eyelids he would pass through every scene in the life of Christ. From childhood the face of Christ had been for him the fulfillment of his every dream and ideal. The face of Christ as he preached to the crowd the Sermon on the Mount. The face of Christ as he passed over the Lake of Galilee at dusk. Even in its moments of te..
|
|
|
Shūsaku Endō |
|
75b71ea
|
Just as with all interpersonal relationships in our life, we are made to suffer by those things we have chosen and, in confronting our choices, we gradually discover ourselves.
|
|
|
Shūsaku Endō |
|
4dbf231
|
For the first time in her life Tomoe came to the realization that there are fools and fools. A man who loves others with an open-hearted simplicity, who trusts others, no matter who they are, even if he is deceived or even betrayed-- such a man in the present-day world is bound to be written off as a fool. And so he is. But not just an ordinary fool. He is a wonderful fool. He is a wonderful fool who will never allow the little light which ..
|
|
love
|
Shūsaku Endō |
|
0222845
|
My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast ! I will sing and make melody ! Awake my soul ! Awake, O harp and lyre ! I will awake the dawn. >> In childhood these words had always risen in his mind when he watched the wind blow over the blue sky and through the trees ; but that was a time when God was not as now an object of fear and perplexity but one who was near to the earth, giving harmony and living joy.
|
|
silence
shusaku-endo
|
Shūsaku Endō |
|
919ca34
|
How did the cowardly disciples come by their sturdy faith after Jesus died? How did a man so ineffectual in this world, who had upset the dreams of his own disciples, come then to be divinized by these same disciples? These two questions forever entangle people who read the Bible, yet the biblical scholars, with their theories of form-criticism or of reductionism, hardly so much as allude to these questions.
|
|
|
Shūsaku Endō |