Saturday, May 27, 2017

Watching and listening again to Martin Scorsese's Silence, things come to mind that I want to put in words.

The five senses play a part in Ignatian spirituality, I learned while attending an Oremus workshop this past week. Even before learning that, however, I caught references in the movie to seeing, smelling, tasting. The movie's soundtrack is practically overwhelming with the sound of crickets!1

Consider these examples from the movie that mention the human senses. When the Jesuit priests encounter the Japanese peasant Christians, they recoil, presumably because of the odor from an inadequate hygiene. On top of this, Kichijiro smells from his alcoholism, "I know, I smell of sin."2 At the Buddhist temple, the interpreter asks Fr. Rodrigues whether he is affected by the smell of incense burning or perhaps the smell of meat being offered. The trip to Hirado brings them close to the sea, "I am sure the air must feel good." The most significant mention of the senses, however, is during Kichijiro's pre-confession confession, what he remembers of his family's execution3.
"Wherever I go, I see the fire and smell the flesh."
Kichijiro is haunted by this eight year old memory, of course! Almost certainly, the memory has become a part of his meditation, his prayer life. He admits how the priests' arrival began to change this for him:
"After I saw you and Padre Garrpe for the first time...I thought...I started to believe...that God might take me back. Because in...in my dreams, the fire was no longer so bright."
During the boat ride to Goto, Fr. Rodrigues brings sea water to his lips while mediating on Christ's crucifixion, “I imagine Your Son, nailed to the cross. My mouth tastes like vinegar.” The human senses augment the priest's spiritual imagination. The overly salted fish served up by Kichijiro makes Fr. Rodrigues thirsty and weak, "The fish was so salty. I...I thirst."

During Fr. Rodrigues's initial encounter with the Inquisitor, Inoue, he looks him steadily in the eyes as he speaks to the Japanese peasant Christians in their native language. The Japanese peasant Christians do not dare raise their faces up to him. After the peasants are dismissed, Fr. Rodrigues answers whether he understood the Inquisitor's words by saying, "I saw your eyes." The Inquisitor calls Rodrigues's bluff, an attempt at covering up his poor language skills, but his regard for him is evident. Characters look to heaven occasionally as they speak. They look upon religious images, they touch and fashion crosses and rosaries, they take communion.

The concern of the Christian peasants of whether God sees them, even though they "hide the Kirishitan images ... Even though we do not have a priest? ... God still sees us, yes?" is contrasted with the repeated use of the words "hidden" and "hide."4 An aspect of the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises is expressed as "looking at God looking at you." This is why Fr. Rodrigues speaks to God from the position of a son, out of his belief that God sees him as a son. And unless the Japanese Christian peasants are convinced that God sees them, their spiritual imagination is stuck.

Repetition as a practice of the Exercises comes through in certain scenes: when Fr. Rodrigues is leading his cellmates in devotions, he repeats with them the phrase, "I shall never be shaken." In his personal reflection, he imagines Christ saying to him, repeatedly, the promise "I will not abandon you." Words and phrases are repeated until they are internalized and become personally meaningful.

On that last point, the word "abandon" occurs throughout the movie. Fr. Ferreira is the first to use the word when he writes that Japanese officials expect Christians to "abandon God and the gospel of his love." In his letter to Fr. Valignano, Fr. Ferreira promises that he will not abandon their hidden Christians in Japan. Fr. Valignano reads aloud Fr. Ferreira's words to FF. Garrpe and Rodrigues5, essentially making the words his own. Fr. Garrpe doesn't want to abandon their mission. Kichijiro begs the priests to take him home to Japan, "Don’t abandon me here, Father, please!" Kichijiro confesses that he could not abandon his family during their execution even if he had abandoned God. In the meeting between the apostate Ferreira and Fr. Rodrigues, the interpreter gets angry with Fr. Rodrigues:
He is Ferreira only to you. He is Sawano Chuan now. A man who has found peace. Let him guide you along his path. The path of mercy. That means only that you abandon self. No one should interfere with another man’s spirit. To help others is the way of the Buddha and your way too. The two religions are the same in this. It’s not necessary to win anyone over to one side or another when there is so much to share.
Then Ferreira confides in Fr. Rodrigues, "I’ve been told to get you to abandon the faith."

I haven't read any online articles that touches upon these things I've noticed about the movie in terms of Ignatian spirituality. I'm not all that versed in the Ignatian program. I would be interested in discovering more ways in which the movie models Ignatian techniques.

1 Funny that the sound of crickets is our way to say, "Nothingness."
2 Kichijiro knows that his besetting sin(s) keep him from being a "pleasing aroma" to the Lord. I think he does get his chance eventually. Quotations are taken from a working script found online at Paramount which does not always match the movie.
3 the way in which Kichijiro's seven family members are lined up as they watch him trample the fumie before their execution reminds me of the Jewish martyrs at the time of Antiochus IV Epiphanes mentioned in 2 Maccabees 7, even though the movie shows a father, mother, two daughters and three sons.
4 the voice that speaks to Rodrigues, that approves his trample of the fumie, says, "Your life is with me now," so similar to Colossians 3:3, "your life is hidden with Christ in God."
5 the opening scene is a little amusing with all of them addressing each other as "Father," especially because it is clear that they do not all have the same rank even though they have the same title.

2 comments:

Jim Bridges said...

You should send this to NCR or America to see if they will publish it.

Moonshadow said...

The time for such articles has already passed. America had an in-house expert in Fr. Martin, a movie "insider," up until his Rome assignment.

I'm a bit embarrassed to be still thinking about the movie so much and trying to write what I think. At the same time, I would like to see the movie get, what I think is, its due.