Realizing LOVE

The concept of spiritual martyrdom brought up in class yesterday intrigued me. While reading Silence I continually tried to reconcile “Whoever denies me before men, I will deny him before my Father in heaven” (Matthew 10:33) and “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay day his life for his friends.” (John 15:13). However, Malory put into words a thought that had been on the tip of my tongue since the beginning of this dilemma. The only biblical precedent for sacrificing oneself for the good of others is found in Christ. He died for sinners- not just the repentant ones- all of them. Jesus was willing to risk separation from God for our salvation. I personally think his most agonizing suffering was when he was hanging on the cross, the weight of the world’s sin covering him, and God turned his face away because he could not look on our sin. “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Mark 15:34). At this point Jesus’ perfect connection with the Father was severed because God could not be in a relationship with sin. The agony embodied in this verse never fails to move me- truly this was the moment when unconditional love was realized. The priest spent the majority of his time in Japan seeing himself as the Christ-figure, a Savior, and exalting himself above the other believers because of his title. However, it wasn’t until he lost his title that he truly understood love. When he was willing to give up the symbols and appearances of religion that had constituted his faith by trampling the fumie, he was also sacrificing his knowledge of faith –all for the life others. He became like Christ when he lowered himself to the position of a sinful believer instead of a priestly martyr. Those others had already apostatized, so what was the point of risking his faith for them? This is where spiritual martyrdom comes in- Christ gave up his perfect relationship with Christ and died for those he knew would one day reject his gift of grace. This is where we see the theme that we are not saved by religious symbols but by faith. Undying, unwavering, incomprehensible faith. The priest’s faith is what gives him hope of redemption and resurrection. Although Endo doesn’t say, I think according to how the priest lived afterward, he did still have faith. “Sharing in the suffering of Christ” for the priest was not physical, rather it was mental and spiritual martyrdom of his previously held notions of religion, eclipsed by the realization of love in the figure of Christ.
“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.’” (191 emphasis added)
P.S. commented on Anna’s “Pursuing Truth…”