Despite Shûsaku Endo's doubts as to the true Christianity of the Japanese evoked in the admirable "Silence", it also seems to me that the Japanese have a real fundamental point in common with the Christian in the ease with which they the place of the other. Is this not one of the founding bases of Christianity, one of these archetypes of the Discourse on the Montage, to always think that our effort has not been important enough, pronounced enough, for the understanding emerges? Of course, I see the weakness of the reasoning: the Japanese tirelessly try to put themselves in the place of the other culturally; he also wishes to make himself better understood; he does not know guilt, but shame… The Christian must put himself in the place of the other because he thinks that the fault comes from him, which does not mean that he has committed the fault, but rather than the lack of attention to the other caused him not to work hard enough to prevent the fault.
The fault is not a fatality for the Christian, because he knows that he must always take it into account as a possibility. He knows it from Adam. Since the Fault. And that is why the Fault exists, to remind us of our weakness and our imperfection and to force us to take into account the possibility of fault. Often, this very simple idea turns into a trial of guilt. At the beginning of Lent, the idea of penance is omnipresent. The accusers of guilt do not understand the essence of penance, which is precisely to review, to track down this weakness that keeps encumbering us. Penance is not a via dolorosa . It is our weakness that is our via dolorosa . And we can at any time try to remedy it. There is no guilt that cannot be fought effectively with the help of grace. Tracking down the times when we had to surrender to our weakness is penance. To try to see higher, to try to elevate ourselves, to try to remove ourselves by greater acuity from our weakness and to make sure empirically that we no longer succumb to it, that is indeed penance in its splendour. The fault is mine. And often the fault comes from a lack of ambition, a lack of faith that causes fear of failure. Christ keeps telling us from the top of the mountain that Solitus in Excelsis. The solution is at the top.
I like this :
I like loading...
Similar items
Learn more about Emmanuel L. Di Rossetti’s Blog
Subscribe to receive the latest articles by email.