[Shusaku Endo's Jesus in A Life of Christ] is approached carefully, quietly, as if his story is to be told accompanied by a simple tune on a hand-carved flute….

[The pace is] slow, the history interesting, the tone reverent, as would befit a man who is trying to tell his people, the Japanese, of a man they know as little about as we do of Buddha. I quickly flagged. Good intentions, my friend, but….

I felt I was in the company of a good, old friend, a baker of substantial whole wheat loaves. Perhaps, as we sometimes reject those plodding, well-intentioned friends of ours, I'd not waited long enough for him. I'd wanted to be swept away and all my friend Endo wanted to do was take me along for a walk.

Paul Wilkes, "Jesus, East and West," in Commonweal (copyright © 1979 Commonweal Publishing Co., Inc.; reprinted by permission...