Apostasy Term Analysis

Their plan was to make their way into Japan in the throes of persecution in order to carry on an underground missionary apostolate and to atone for the apostasy of Ferreira which had so wounded the honor of the Church.

This story was well known. Its moral was that a priest does not exist to become a martyr; he must preserve his life in order that the flame of faith may not utterly die when the church is persecuted.

If it is not blasphemous to say so, I have the feeling that Judas was no more than an unfortunate puppet for the glory of the drama which was the life and death of Christ.

All those Christians and missionaries who had been tortured and punished—had they heard the gentle voice of persuasion prior to their suffering?

He had come to this country to lay down his life for other men, but instead of that, the Japanese were laying down their lives one by one for him.

“You make yourself more important than them. You are preoccupied with your own salvation. If you say that you will apostatize, those people will be taken out of the pit. This will be saved from suffering. And you refuse to do so. It’s because you dread to betray the Church. You dread to be the dregs of the Church, like me.”

[Rodrigues] will now trample what he has considered the most beautiful thing in his life, on what he has believed most pure, on what is filled with the ideals and the dreams of man. How his foot aches! And then the Christ in bronze speaks to the priest: “Trample! Trample! I more than anyone know of the pain in your foot. 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.”

Yet the face was different from that on which the priest had gazed so often in Portugal, in Rome, in Goa and in Macao. It was not a Christ whose face was filled with majesty and glory; neither was it a face made beautiful by endurance of pain; nor was it a face filled with the strength of a will that has repelled temptation. The face of the man who lay at his feet was sunken and utterly exhausted.

“Lord, I resented your silence.”

“I was not silent. I suffered beside you.”

“But you told Judas to go away: What thou dost do quickly. What happened to Judas?”

“I did not say that. Just as I told you to step on the plaque, so I told Judas to do what he was going to do. For Judas was in anguish as you are now.”