How can a life of great suffering produce a man of great joy? Van Thuan told us how, leaving 10 rules of life he lived by — rules that can be incarnated in every Christian life, just like they were in the life of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton.
Cardinal Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan was a member of the Vatican curia as the third millennium began. “He was almost always smiling or laughing, but never in a superficial or happy-go-lucky way,” said Kishore Jayabalan, who worked with him, in the National Catholic Register. “You could tell his joy came through his suffering and identification with Christ.”
Behind the smile were a dozen years as a prisoner in communist Vietnam — more than two thirds of that time in solitary confinement. He died in Rome at age 74 in 2002, and his cause for canonization began soon after. He was declared venerable by Pope Francis in 2017.
Van Thuan’s rules began with the Catholic community that nurtured him.
When he was born as the eldest child to his parents in Hue, Vietnam, on April 17, 1928, Francis Xavier represented the fourteenth Catholic generation of the Thuan family. His family was not insignificant: His uncle was Ngo Dinh Diem, the first president of South Vietnam.
He started at a young age on the path to the priesthood, becoming ordained at age 25 in 1953, and then entered the fast track to the episcopacy, earning a canon law doctorate from the Gregorian in Rome before returning to Nha Trang seminary as a faculty member, then rector.
The Viet Cong assassinated his uncle in 1963, and Communist extremism was at its height when he was made bishop of Nha Trang in 1967.
As a young bishop, Van Thuan had attended the Second Vatican Council and met another young bishop, Karol Wojtyla from Poland, the future Pope John Paul II, who warned him about the ways of Communist opponents.
Van Thuan had the opportunity to put that advice in action in 1975. Pope Paul VI named Van Thuan the new leader of the Church in Saigon. Soon, he was arrested and taken to a prison at Cay Vong, 250 miles away from his cathedral.
The rules became especially important when the young bishop was taken to prison.
En route, the cardinal made a decision not to waste his years in prison, and he prayed to God to show him the way.
God made it clear to Bishop Van Thuan that the gold standard for not wasting your time in prison was St. Paul, who wrote four New Testament epistles while incarcerated.
Van Thuan began following in the Apostle’s footsteps by ripping pages from his calendar and penciling thoughts in Italian on the back. He tossed his thoughts to children playing near the prison, who brought them to local Catholics. They responded by sending food to the cardinal, wrapped in banned Vatican “propaganda”: L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper.
Eventually, when Van Thuan asked for wine and crackers to help his stomach, his Catholic benefactors knew what he was after, and provided what he needed to say daily Mass in his cell. He would use his hand as a chalice and cigarette wrappers as a tabernacle for consecrated hosts.
His prison ministry was hugely successful: Van Thuan converted prison guards with such regularity that authorities began to rotate personnel regularly to limit contact.
The messages Van Thuan wrote were printed into a book, The Road to Hope, which was distributed worldwide while he was still in prison. A second book written in prison, Prayers of Hope, is mentioned in Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical, Spe Salvi.
The lessons Van Thuan learned are timeless, and applicable to every Christian’s life.
In prison, Van Thuan developed 10 “rules of life” that can transform anyone’s life. Here they are, with elaboration from the life of Elizabeth Ann Seton.
“I will live the present moment to the fullest.”
This is great advice that is hard to consistently put into practice. But St. Elizabeth Ann said that for her, living each moment to the full was a matter of applying a principle we all already know. We all know that God is everywhere, filling all things, governing all things. What we need to remember, then, Elizabeth said, is that we live in him. She wrote: “He is more intimately present to us than we are to ourselves, and whatever we do is done in him.”
“I will discern between God and God’s works.”
St. Elizabeth Ann’s advice in this regard is: Read the Bible. Her Bible reading habit started in lay life and lasted to the end of her life. She wrote in her Scripture notes: “Oh my God! … From break of day, I seek thee, till the dead of night. All is solitary where thou are not, and where thou art is fullness of joy.”
“I will hold firmly to one secret: prayer.”
“Secret” prayer was a special charism of Elizabeth Seton, too. She tried to “make my very breathing a continual thanksgiving,” and counseled that simply repeating “Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus” as a prayer was sustaining.
“I will see in the holy Eucharist my only power.”
Mother Seton agreed, and so regularly visited the Blessed Sacrament. “I sit or stand opposite his tabernacle all day,” she said, “and keep the heart to it as the needle to the pole.”
“I will have only one wisdom: the science of the cross.”
St. Elizabeth Ann Seton’s story of lifelong loss helped her learn that simply putting one foot in front of another in painful times is enough. “It is the cross which carries us,” she said. “The weakest become strong by its virtue.”
“I will seek the peace the world cannot give.”
St. Elizabeth Ann found the peace the world wouldn’t give by seeking it in fidelity, not success.
“If it succeeds, I bless God. If it does not succeed … I bless God, because then it will be right that it should not succeed.”
Two of Van Thuan’s rules were: “I will speak one language and wear one uniform: charity;” and “I will have one very special love: the Blessed Virgin Mary.”
Elizabeth might have seen these two as one.
She called Mary “the first Sister of Charity on earth” and said she lived her life “to honor by imitation her life as a model for all conditions of life, her poverty, humility, purity, love and sufferings.”
Two final Van Thuan rules are: “I will carry out a revolution by renewal in the Holy Spirit;” and “I will remain faithful to my mission in the Church and for the Church as a witness of Jesus Christ.”
What Cardinal Van Thuan teaches us is that the key to a faithful Christian life is living your state in life regardless of your circumstances. Elizabeth Ann Seton did that again and again, from childhood to married life, and as foundress of the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph’s to her deathbed.
So, learn from this humble Vatican cardinal.
His life had been shaped by pain and sacrifice, but he joked and laughed. What was said of him could be said of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton and every Christian: Suffering, in Christ, is transformed into joy.
TOM HOOPES, author most recently of The Rosary of Saint John Paul II, is writer in residence at Benedictine College in Kansas, where he teaches. He hosts The Extraordinary Story podcast about the life of Christ. His book What Pope Francis Really Said is now available on Audible. A former reporter in the Washington, D.C., area, he served as press secretary for the U.S. House Ways & Means Committee Chairman and spent 10 years as editor of the National Catholic Register newspaper and Faith & Family magazine. His work frequently appears in the Register, Aleteia, and Catholic Digest. He lives in Atchison, Kansas, with his wife, April, and has nine children.
To view all the Seton Reflections, click here.
Image: Public Domain