Arts and Culture event in Pasco, Washington March, 2014 Do you hear the people sing? Beyond the barricade, is there a world you long to see? Yes I am certain that all of us present here, we all long each day for a more beautiful, more human world just like the one aspired to, by Fantine, in Les Misérables, when she sang: ``I dream of a world where love would never die ...” Good morning Your Excellency, Reverend Fathers, Members of religious orders, brothers and sisters of all different faiths. I want to thank you for making it possible for me to be here to attend this Arts and Culture Event, This Magnificent Encounter. The message from Les Misérables, describing 19th century French society, is in fact a universal one that transcends all periods of humanity and all geographical boundaries. What is so beautiful, and so eminently human about it, is that, while we, the audience, make ourselves at one with the victims in their sufferings, we somehow do not always wallow in despair at the violence, the misery and the injustice that man inflicts upon man: rather, we feel encouraged to keep listening to an inner voice that emboldens us to take up the fight that will help break down all form of barriers in order to bring people closer to one another, and create true encounters. Intro. My name is Elizabeth Nguyen, I am the youngest in a family of 10. Like so many others, my family has fought for generations for a true democracy and freedom in Vietnam, our native homeland. Yet, examples still abound, here in diaspora, and wherever else we go, that keep reminding us that the fight still goes on. We continue to witness poverty, misery and violence, and persecution, often to such level as to drive us to total despair, to stop in believing in human ability to change and to love. And then… Just as we are about to give up, we learn of stories of transformation, of purification leading to reconciliation, of bridge building, and of new, true lasting friendship. Just like in Les Misérables, we find ourselves confronted with the cries of angry men in tears, seething with frustration and a sense of helplessness in the wake of broken dreams. But almost out of the blue, we also witness the transformation of Valjean, precipitated by the touching and merciful gesture of Monsignor Myriel, the true love of Cosette and her friend, and the selflessness of Fantine. Today, it is my privilegeto have been asked to share with you the life of a man whom I knew very well, my eldest brother, Servant of God Francis Xavier Nguyen van Thuan, who was similarly called to travel the journey of transformation and purification leading to true forgiveness, reconciliation and total freedom. And it is important, almost a duty for us all to share stories of such lives because they remind us, even more, they convince us that such miracles happen in real life, because human beings are capable of love. The Vietnam war. After the hasty departure of American forces in 1975, the Republic of South Vietnam fell to the communists. The world witnessed firsthand and in real time the exodus of Vietnamese Boat-people, a newly-coined word in the English dictionary, the simplicity of which belied the tragedy that created it in the first place. Other words such as re-education, isolation cells, refugee camps, religious persecutions, also re-emerged to full public awareness. Like many of our compatriots, our family left everything behind, in their quest for the freedom they were about to forfeit, and to escape communist retribution, no less, against people like ourselves, who held different beliefs, and fought to uphold them in the face of what we saw as an oppressive regime. Some of us managed to hop on the last commercial flights out of the country, others escaped by boat, braving heavy seas which, frightening as they might be, paled in comparison to the prospect of murderous attacks by pirates. Two of my brothers, Michael, father of 2, and Francis, young bishop of the diocese of NhaTrang, would remain behind in Vietnam and end up spending long years in prison. Francis Xavier Nguyen van Thuan. In 1967, Francis was ordained Bishop of the diocese of NhaTrang. He was also appointed President of the Episcopal Conference and President of the Catholic Organization for the Reconstruction of Vietnam (COREV). In the late 60s, it became increasingly clear that the Communists would take over the entire country and that the clergy’s activities would be severely curtailed, if not downright forbidden. Francis’ episcopal years were then devoted to preparing his people for a period of persecution under the new regime. He oversaw a complete reorganization and set up new formation sessions for pastoral teams, as well as initiating interreligious and intercultural dialogues. His responsibility within COREV provided him with the opportunity to serve all refugees displaced by war, to rally all religious leaders into working together and with him on this humanitarian project. He wrote 6 Pastoral Letters aimed at inviting everyone to a spiritual renewal, to develop an opennessto all neighbours, regardless their faith, social class, or political conviction, and to make concrete effort to step out of one’s comfort zone to bring the Good News to all walks of humanity. All his efforts were, at the time, being closely monitored by the Communist regime. The arrest. In April 1975, one week before the fall of Saigon, Pope Paul VI appointed Francis as Archbishop coadjutor of Saigon, now renamed Ho Chi Minh City. This nomination was construed by the communist regime as a deliberate conspiracy by the Vatican and the imperialists to set up a resistance movement against the new government. Three months later, Francis was summoned to the presidential palace, where he was immediately arrested. The date was August 15th, Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s Assumption. He recalled that experience: ``That night, the police drove me along the 450 km road that took me to my place of forced residence in the village of Cay Vong, under both open and secret supervision of communist police mingled in among the villagers. Many confused thoughts came to my mind: sadness, humiliation, abandonment, exhaustion after the tension of the 3 previous months. The separation from my family, from my faithful was a shock that devastated my heart. ‘’ Francis was tormented by the fact that he was only 47 years old, in the prime of his life, with 8 years of fruitful pastoral experience: under his administration, the number of seminarians had surged, he had built shelters for war refugees, solidified catholic teachings in schools, stepped up the formation of pastoral groups, etc., Then, suddenly, in the midst of such flourishing activity, the rug was pulled from under his feet. He found himself in a state of disbelief, if not downright rebellion, questioning God’s will. But let’s listen to him: `` One night, I heard a voice encouraging me from the depths of my heart: Son, why do you torment yourself? You must distinguish between God and the works of God. All the things you have done and desire to continue doing are excellent works, they are God’s works and not God. If God wants you to leave all these works, place them in His hands immediately and have confidence in Him. He will accomplish things infinitely better than you. He will entrust his works to others much more capable than you. You Francis, you have chosen God alone, not his works!” This light brought him a new strength that completely changed his way of thinking and helped him overcome moments that, one heartbeat ago, had appeared physically unsurmountable. Francis reflected upon the meaning of his vocation and the promise he had made on that morning of his first communion: to live a life pleasing to God. He had always applied himself to be a true disciple, and had gone through much transformation since childhood, but now, a much more radical transformation and purification was about to begin. He prayed for courage to remain strong in the darkness of those moments and, in the midst of his anxiety, kept asking himself and God : `` ….What should I do for my faithful, for those of my people who at this very moment, are in a predicamentsimilar to mine, if not worse. What could I, a prisoner, locked up here, in this cell, possibly do?” Then, one night, the light shone at the end of the tunnel: ``Francis, it is very simple. Do what St. Paul did while he was in prison: he wrote letters to the different communities.” The next morning, in October 1975, while it was still dark, he managed to catch the attention of a 7 year-old boy named Quang, who was passing by, on his way back from early mass. He told Quang: ``I am your bishop, but I am now a prisoner here. Please ask your mother to findme some old calendar leaves that I can use to write on, and some pencils”. Promptly that evening, Quang returned with the calendar leaves. Every night during the months of October and November 1975, Francis wrote, from captivity, spiritual messages for his faithful and, in the morning, tossed them secretly outside in a pre-determined spot for Quangto pick up immediately after and take home. There, his family would recopy the messages for distribution to various communities. [Quang reminds me so much of Gavroche, that young selfless hero in Les Misérables, full of hope and zest for life whose rallied everybody with his enthusiasm.] Some time later, our family received a copy of those messages compiled into a booklet and smuggled out of Vietnam by the “Boat people”. An Australian friend who had studied Vietnamese translated it in English and the book, which was subsequently published in several languages, was entitled: The Road of Hope, The Gospel from prison. (show the book) When the government found out about this clandestine project, they decided to punish Francis andmake an example of him, as a deterrent to anybody who was thinking of disobeying. Francis was placed in the harshest form of captivity: he was locked up in an isolation cell in the prison of PhuKhanh. Let’s listen to how he described this cell: ``When I found myself in the prison of PhuKhanh, confined to a cell without windows, in extremely hot weather, suffocating, I felt myself gradually becoming more lifeless, until I lost consciousness. At times the light in the cell was left on day and night, at other times it was always dark. It was so humid that mushrooms began to grow on my sleeping mat. In the darkness I saw light coming in through a crack at the bottom of the door. So I spent the next 100 days on the floor, putting my nose near the crack in order to breath. When it rained and the water level rose, little insects came in and I had no strength left to drive them away” He confided in our family that he was then on the verge of insanity. He has preached in his life how to pray, how to love and to forgive, but in this cell, he suffered so much physically and mentally that everything became a major struggle. Francis was subjected to such constant humiliation and mental torture that, at times, it was difficult to muster the strength to try and see the goodness in others. The prison environment was anything but humane, civil or merciful. He felt the deep desire to connect, to dialogue with another human being, as is, after all, human nature. He recognized that the walls of the cell had the power to imprison his body, yet the difficulty to forgive and to love was a much stronger wall imprisoning his mind, his soul. This is how he felt about those moments: ``Perhaps, all of us have lived similar moments of abandonment. At times we feel misunderstood, disappointed, betrayed. We notice the insufficiency of our strength and our solitude in the face of tasks that are bigger than we are. We encounter the atrocious sufferings around us. The very lights of faith and love seem to extinguish themselves at such moments and we fall into sadness and anguish, and this darkens our certainty of the presence of God who is close and who gives meaning to our lives.” (Testimony of Hope p.88) He remembered with pain and humility how often he had taught his faithful to forgive; he remembered the unwavering fortitude of his ancestors who had persevered through centuries of persecution; he needed healing, he implored God to deliver him from this darkness, from this anguish. He asked for help to break through these walls. (story of the female guard) “Francis, you are still very rich. You have the love of Christ in your heart. Love them as Jesus loved you”. He meditated these words and was filled with renewed dignity and Joy, now with the feeling he was being loved, healed, transformed and liberated. He was still a prisoner, but a free one because he was no longershackled by hatred, the feeling of humiliation, or the thirst for revenge. He now held a different perspective on his life in this cell, among these people, at this particular period in history. He was asked to be the messenger of reconciliation, he was sent to bring Hope, to be Love. He has crossed the barricade of hatred. In December 1976,following persistent international pressure, he was removed from his prison and sent to the re-education camps in the North of Vietnam. He recounted his experience in chapter 9 of “Testimony of Hope” (Testimony of Hope p. 75) ``At 9pm in the evening of December 1976, I suddenly found myself with a large group of prisoners. Chained in pairs, we were loaded by police onto a truck. We arrived at a new military port opened by the Americans a few years before, and there we boarded the ship and headed north, a 1700 km voyage. Along with the other prisoners, I was taken to the hold of the ship where coal is usually loaded. Our only light came from a small oil lamp; other than that, complete darkness reigned. A total of 1500 people were forced to endure indescribable conditions. The next morning, a little sunlight infiltrated the hold of the ship and, in that funeral atmosphere I could make out the distraught and despairing faces of the prisoners around me. The second night in the cold of that December on the Pacific Ocean, I began to understand that a new stage of my vocation was beginning. I understood that at this point, on this ship, in this prison, was my most beautiful cathedral, and that all the prisoners, without exception, were the people of God entrusted to my pastoral care. My prison was divine providence. It was the will of God. I spoke of all of this to the other prisoners and there was born among us a profound communion, a new commitment. We were all called to be together“ witnesses of hope for all people.” Francis recalled that he was chained on different occasions, randomly, with prisoners of different faiths, from different walks of life, mutually having to do practically everything for each other, fostering an opportunity for new friendship and meaningful dialogue and developing a true spirit of service. Painful and uncomfortable as it was, the experience enabled him to make himself truly at one with everybody. It also instilled into him and all the other inmates the ability to see the humanity in every human person, including and especially those who seemedmost contemptible or hostile, and to regard them as neighbours, brothers and sisters. And in this exercise of compassion, we truly practise the central content of salvation. The Good News of God, who is close to humanity, is only visible if we make ourselves close to all people. The years spent in re-education camps in North Vietnam were times of true sharing. His previous apostolic experience had until then exposed him to other people’s pain and suffering, their material, moral and spiritual destitution, and he had heard their cries of despair. But right now, and right here, was ground zero. He was in it, he felt it and he inhaled it all in. He experienced the joy of being among, and sharing the fate of a varied group of innocent victims unceremoniously tossed in with other petty criminals that he had been called upon to lead, by divine providence. They all became his new faithful, and the camps were his new diocese. He was given the task of carrying wood from the field to the living quarters, for heating and for the communal cooking, also his job. General food redistribution was also his responsibility, and a challenging one at that. He told us of extreme food rationing, and resulting hunger, and how inmates were at times driven to selfishness and refused to share any of the precious food they’d received periodically from their families. Francis was able to foster in them all a burgeoning sense of brotherhood in the face of adversity, and that, in turn, finally opened them to the reality that a burden shared and carried together becomes so much lighter, and can only be conducive to a lessening of fear and anguish. (Story of how Francis was able to make his pectoral cross). The prison guard no longer obeyed the rules of prison, but believed in friendship. A wall of human laws created to inflict pain on one another had broken down. In 1979, Francis was transferred from the re-education camps to solitary house arrest in Giang-Xa, a suburb of Hanoi, in North Vietnam. He was kept in an abandoned parish house next to the church that had been closed since 1954, right after the Geneva Treaty that divided Vietnam in two, the Communist North, and the Democratic South. He was under round-the-clock supervision by two men. After an initial period of mistrust and suspicion by the guards, Francis succeeded in initiating a dialogue with them, and gradually, he managed to win them over. It was during that period that he was able to write many books and bring the teachings of Vatican Council II to the clergy in North Vietnam. As it happened, the Vietnamese clergy had been estranged and completely cut off from Rome since 1954, receiving no update whatsoever on official Church matters. With the guards’ complicity, and additional help from local villagers, Francis was able to clandestinely receive seminarians and even ordain priests during the night. We were able to receive news from him and send food packages several times a year during that time. Unfortunately, he was eventually found out by the authorities and removed from Giang-Xa, then taken to the police headquarters in Hanoi in the early 80s until 1988. Our family was deeply grateful, recently, for the opportunity to personally meet the men who guarded Francis all those years. Meeting with them has brought peace to both parties, prison guards and family of the former prisoner alike. After an initial feeling of uneasiness, I was able to recognize that mercy and forgiveness had changed their lives, while, for my part, any feeling of resentment and bitterness simply vanished through forgiveness. We all understood that both sides were victims of the absurdity of war with its attendant savagery, and that we were only now waking up from the nightmare of a society where love was absent. “Testimonies from the guards.” Francis became more and more aware that, for a reason, his life had taken many unexpected turns, and led him to meet many different peoples, much in keeping with his vocation, which was to bring light, compassion, forgiveness and radical love to those around him. Love begets love, generates strength, courage and joy, and as this miraculous circle grows bigger and bigger, it transforms and beautifies everything it touches in its path. The former prison guards still keep handwritten lexicons Francis made for them when he taught them foreign languages as a souvenir of a deep friendship. On November 21st, 1988, day of Mary’s Presentation in the Temple, after 13 years of incarceration, Francis was freed. He was exiled from his native Vietnam in 1991. My sister Anne went to pick him up at Bangkok InternatiuonalAorport, Thailand, and she could hardly recognize her own brother. Francis had entered prison at the age of 47, and was freed at the age of 61. Standing in front of her was an older, thin, frail looking man who seemed gentle, exuding peace and serenity. During his exile, Francis served the Church as President of the Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace at the Vatican, and he was elevated to the College of Cardinals in 2001. On September 16th, 2002, he succumbed to illness and crossed the last barricade to rejoice in Eternal life. Throughout his life, from one task to another, from one struggle to the next, Francis has faithfully said “ YES” to the calling as we heard in LES MISERABLES:``Will you give all you can give, will you stand up and take your chance, So that the banner of Love can advance?” His Cause of Beatification was opened in 2008 and concluded on 2013 with the blessing of The Holy Father Pope Francis. Francis was touched by God’s love, believed in love, became love for others because as he has said time and time again: it is not the media, the weapons, the superpowers, the wealththat can change hearts. Love changes hearts. Justice, fairness, peace don’t come from a war, a set of laws or treaties. They come from a change of hearts. Elizabeth Nguyen |
Tác giả: Elizabeth Nguyễn Thị Thu Hồng
Nguồn tin: Gia đình Cựu Chủng sinh Huế
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