Silence: God in the Silence (1 Kings 19:11-13)

In Silence, Jesuit missionaries in 17th-century Japan face persecution and apostasy. Father Rodrigues begs God to speak—and hears nothing. Or so he thinks. In the film's climax, Christ's voice finally comes, quietly, in his moment of greatest failure. After the fire came a gentle whisper. Rodrigues wanted the earthquake of divine intervention; he received the whisper of painful presence. Silence is not God's absence; it is God's different mode of presence. The voice does not always come in power. Sometimes it comes in the sound of your own surrender.