ArteFact

In his acclaimed novel Silence, Shūsaku Endō questions the viability of the tree of Hellenized Christianity taking root in the “mud swamp” of Japan. What was once hospitable, fertile ground for the seed planted by St. Francis Xavier, becomes the land of a hunted and persecuted Christianity, as depicted in the story of two missionary priests and the community in their care.

It is not easy to convey the notion of vocation in a secular world. Modern men and women tend to think of life as consisting in a series of choices, to be made by the individual in a linear fashion, according to what attracts or repulses them...