Catholics From Japan

"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."

"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.""

"There are neither the strong nor the weak. Can anyone say that the weak do not suffer more than the strong?"

"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."

"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.""

"When you suffer, I suffer with you. To the end I am close to you."

"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. They 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." Until now Ferreira’s words had burst out as a single breath of anger, but now his voice gradually weakened as he said: "Yet I was the same as you. On that cold, black night I, too, was as you are now. And yet is your way of acting love? A priest ought to live in imitation of Christ. If Christ were here...?" For a moment Ferreira remained silent; then he suddenly broke out in a strong voice: "Certainly Christ would have apostatized for them."

"I did pray. I kept on praying. But prayer did nothing to alleviate their suffering. Behind their ears a small incision has been made; the blood drips slowly through this incision and through the nose and mouth. I know it well, because I have experienced that same suffering in my own body. Prayer does nothing to alleviate suffering."

"He was distracted by the tormenting pain of the rope which bit into his wrists whenever he moved his body, but what grieved him most was his inability to love these people as Christ had loved them."

"The reason why darkness is 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."

"In order to pile weakness upon weakness he was trying to drag others along the path that he himself had walked."

"His pity for them had been overwhelming; but pity was not action. It was not love. Pity, like passion, was no more than a kind of instinct."

"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'."

"Lord, why are you silent? Why are you always silent...?"

"Sin, he reflected, is not what it is usually thought to be; it is not to steal and tell lies. Sin is for one man to walk brutally over the life of another and to be quite oblivious of the wounds he has left behind."

"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."

"Already twenty years have passed since the persecution broke out; the black soil of Japan has been filled with the lament of so many Christians; the red blood of priests has flowed profusely; the walls of the churches have fallen down; and in the face of this terrible and merciless sacrifice offered up to Him, God has remained silent."

"The wisdom of peasants shows itself in their ability to pretend that they are fools."

"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."

"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."

"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 to 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 touched their hearts."

"Oshida told Father Trahan that what he had said was infinitely more precious than any word to indicate that he understood what Oshida wanted and needed to do. He left the superior’s room with a Deo gratias! (“Thanks be to God”) and a Tibi gratias! (“Thank you”) on his lips. He was overwhelmed by the deep sense that he had experienced the chikaryū (地下流), the “subterranean stream,” the current of faith flowing from the Unborn Sphere deeply beneath the world’s religions, traditions, and indigenous communities in the East and West, forming many different and distinct tributaries."

"If the so-called “followers of Christ” today insist that their task in East-West dialogue means you compare yourselves to others, is this the sign of the New Horizon of bare reality? Each way should be unique, a unique way to the very him, to himself, not to man in general."

"In every religion it is the same—each one is unique. Shakyamuni Buddha and Dogen Zenji and others—each is unique. The sutra—the canonical Scripture—in other traditions is another kind of revelation. Don’t compare! Don’t say, “I am superior.” Learn other mystical currents. We should adore by Spirit and bare reality. Don’t condemn! Don’t compare!"

"It is true, even in Buddhism, there is pain, vain talk about ‘enlightenment’ as though enlightenment were a uniform one could put on. And then there is the problem of the koan. Buddhists and Western followers of Buddhism are attached to the koan because they lack any real sign of tradition. If they do not have sub-currents it is better for them to disappear. The koan is the occasion to cut us off. “If you have faith, you can move mountains” (Matthew 17:20) is a koan. It cuts through! The bonzes do not know the reason for the koan. Therefore the bonzes cannot satisfy. A flower can be a koan. A great master, Gutei, made a koan of his finger."

"限りなき なみだの海に 消えず 立たなむ 茂人"

"Holy breath breathes deeply setting earth and water ablaze false self’s face burns away God-given life endures"

"Falling leaf’s voice listen the Unborn Sphere"

"He was unlike anyone whom I had ever met before, a Zen master, a Buddhist who had met Jesus, a Dominican friar, and a Catholic priest. Yet I felt utterly at home with him, touched at the core of my being."

"The Buddha-Jesus statue at Takamori Soan symbolizes the dynamic of eternal salvation so well. Buddha, in a sense, is the Lord of this world. There is a story about Buddha saying at his birth, “I alone am the honored one in the heavens and on earth” (Chinese 天上天下唯我独尊). Jesus is the Son of the Holy Other, the Father, who is not contained in this universe, but is its Creator. Jesus is sent to live among us in this world as a channel for eternal salvation. Buddha, gazing upon the child, Jesus, is holding incarnate Love, coming from the Holy Other as His Only Son. Buddha represents this world, yearning for salvation."

"There is the Voice seducing us, calling us to a leap of faith like the deer plunging over the precipice. The Unborn Sphere is everywhere, as is the Hand of God, the Source, the Absolute, out of which flow the streams of faith, the sound of every bell, and the fall of every flower and leaf. Tiny things, sparrows, know the Way of Heaven. There is synesthesia and the juxtaposition of the abstract and the concrete, water turned to bird and whispering fish, satori in the splitting of the moon in a moment of sadness, the poet born again, steeped in sin and the unspeakable mystery of baptismal washing in every tradition. Everywhere too is the cross and sacrament, gratitude for the holocaust of dust and ashes, the tornado-like union of life and death in resurrection."

"Father James Campbell, an American Dominican, loved to tell of his meeting with Oshida. He had been a bomber pilot in the Second World War and repented of his collusion in this violence. He went to Japan to ask for forgiveness and there met Oshida. James expressed his sorrow at his sin; Oshida laughed and said that he had been in the anti-aircraft artillery and he repented that he had not shot down James! There followed laughter and the tumbling down of all barriers. Two people face-to-face, naked and unafraid."

"Dialogue of action, if it is to be truly effective, must be nourished by every other form of dialogue - dialogue of theological discourse, dialogue of religious experience, dialogue of life. Only then will religion touch deeply the lives of people, answer their deepest needs and thus fulfill its own true function."

"This is the community of today: a community of faith that, after having experienced such tragic moments, bears witness to the hope of the risen Christ: precisely because we are facing death, persecution, death of the atomic bomb, and from these shocking events, we have risen again, there is hope in our hearts, yes, recovery, rebirth, thanks to the work of God."

"I pray that our collaboration and exchange over these few days will convey to the world our shared hope that the abolition of nuclear weapons is possible, that world peace is attainable, and that the circle of cooperation for the realization of peace will further expand."

"Peace never occurs in isolation. It is the fruition of a good life for all. For that reason, working for peace is considered to be a highly esteemed spiritual value. Peace is the greatest blessing of God to a people. Working for peace should be a central concern of the Church."

""Inculturation", is inevitable in evangelization; otherwise, Christianity would always be a "foreign" religion for the people of Asia. The shedding of European cultural characteristics does not absolutely mean any separation with the Catholic Faith, since inculturation is promoted while firmly taking into account the Deposit of Faith."

"I do not want the nation's journalists to lose their courage in the face of recurring violence against the press."

"The time has arrived to look at the Japanese Church within the context of Asia and the world."

"For the Japanese Church to fulfill its common responsibility to society, it is necessary for people, priests and bishops to be united. For that to happen it is vital that information gets through to every single Christian, it is one of the features of modern society that every kind of information finds its way into the living room."

"Once I became a priest, I understood that the relationship with others is fundamental. As I encountered social problems and became passionate about them, I saw that the way of the Carmel was not for me. This is why I became a diocesan priest."

"Social welfare is not just a department, a field of activity. Those who work there should have the awareness that this is the Church itself."

"The individual is forced into circumstances where he or she must discover his/her own way of life without any help at all. The communities in which modern man now lives are two, school and the workplace, and these, far from giving support and rest, are responsible for severe and ceaseless competition. Given such circumstances, isn't it possible to understand why people would want to escape from it all and make a trial of joining some community that would provide them with a model for living?"

"If the Church is to give a dynamic lead to such people, we must abandon thought patterns and methodology we used until now, and go to meet them where people are drawn to one another at a deeper level."

"Thomas' writing is like a piece by Bach, with a rhythm that makes it easy to approach. Once I got into the translation, it went pretty quickly. it would be a mistake to think it is supposed to be the answer to every question. Instead, the Summa Theologica is a roadmap for life."

"We may have made a mistake concerning our attitude to nature or the environment. Genesis says that we should have control over every creature. But we should have control according to the will of God. But we are not God."

"Catholics from other countries share their strong Catholic traditions and they are a channel of evangelisation. They represent hope for our local Church also because they have numerous children. Moreover many Catholic immigrant women marry Japanese husband, they are missionaries in the family and they bring up the children in the Catholic faith. Immigration is an important phenomenon in Japanese society, it is a challenge and an opportunity for evangelisation."

"When Salesians just work and work for their whole life and then just retire in their own room, sometimes their Salesian mission is over. You need just to be with the young or young adults. Probably the young Salesians need to know personally the Salesian Youth Spirituality – not just from books but also at the practical experiential level. It does include praying together with the young people, forming them as the youth apostles and offering some strong experience of volunteer life."

"It is so easy for a diocese to crumble if its people do not unite and give serious attention to solidarity. This is the message I wish to send, from a diocese that has learned this truth through agonizing, first-hand experience, to the rest of the Church in Japan."

"Prayer has big power to support people, to encourage people, that's what I feel every day here."