This suggests that although Rodrigues has betrayed the institution of Christianity, he has not ultimately betrayed Christ himself.This chapter is a complaint and lamentation like the former, and on the same subject, only the prophet mixes his own afflictions and distresses with the public calamities or else he represents the church in her complaints and some have thought him to be a type of Christ throughout the whole to whom various things may be applied. Although Rodrigues becomes an agent of the Japanese government helping them to combat Christianity, and although he is expelled from the Church, he maintains a private devotion to Christ and faith in God. After meeting Ferreira, who is a true apostate and believes that Christianity can never take root in Japan, and realizing that the Japanese Christians will be tortured until he apostatizes, Rodrigues ultimately chooses to step on Christ’s image, feeling that Christ affirms his choice and suffers alongside him in his pain. As Rodrigues wrestles with God’s silence and struggles to counter the magistrate Inoue’s arguments about Christianity’s compatibility with and benefit for Japan, his faith wavers. Although Rodrigues once pictured suffering for Christ and martyrdom as the most glorious end to one’s life (revealing how his devotion to God is mixed with his desire for personal glory), his experience fleeing the Japanese officials, being betrayed by Kichijiro, and being imprisoned destroys that illusion.
However, the suffering of the Japanese Christians and the fierce persecution they face challenges his faith in God, especially as he sees many faithful Christians ingloriously killed and is confused by God’s silence in the face of their suffering. When Rodrigues travels to Japan with Kichijiro and Father Garrpe, he is bold and passionate about his faith in Jesus Christ, often reflecting on Christ’s face which he finds as beautiful as one finds their beloved. He is a Portuguese Catholic missionary who travels to Japan to be a priest for the Japanese Christians and discover the truth about his former mentor, Father Ferreira, who is rumored to have apostatized and renounced his faith. Father Rodrigues is the protagonist of the story.
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