C
Cojuanco
Guest
I don’t know if this is the appropriate forum, but here goes:
I met Fr. F. at Daily Mass here on Campus (It’s like Newman Club, but called something different.) He delivered homilies which really made you think (typical, given he’s a Jesuit), though his thick Vietnamese accent sometimes made him hard to understand. A rather funny fellow, too, after Mass and over coffee and donuts (It seems almost obligatory at Catholic events, seriously), and he loved to talk about his family, and how they would often play pranks on each other. I did notice an elderly Vietnamese lady kept attending all his Masses.
Later, I, bored, and for a lark, decided to search Father’s name over the Internet. Found something on the Jesuits’ website, and I took a look-see. And I was moved by this story:
Fr. F was born to devoutly Catholic parents in Saigon, then-South Vietnam. As a little boy he always was fascinated by the Jesuits, and their ease among the people. As an older boy he witnessed the Communists enter Saigon, after America had pulled out. One by one he saw priests arrested by the Communists, subject to torture and execution; the remainder went underground, supported by families like his. Eventually, things got bad enough that his family, with several siblings, aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents, booked illegal passage out of the country to Thailand.
Now these boats weren’t the kind you’d see, say, in Newport today. These were small fishing boats, intended maybe for ten people, with about forty packed onto it. Furthermore, they were just barely seaworthy. But it was all that they had to flee the Communists.
Now in those days, the seas between Vietnam and Thailand were rife with pirates, mostly poor fishermen who looked to get some money on the side. They would try to stop refugee boats, take valuables, sometimes people for forced labor or worse, especially the women. Now they came across a pirate boat, who told them to stop, but the skipper of the refugee boat refused. The pirates opened fire. Out of his large family, only him and his aunt survive. Eventually they reached shore and Thailand, and the first people to meet them at the refugee camp were, funnily enough, Jesuits.
Eventually he and his aunt made their way to the United States. He eventually entered the Jesuits, was ordained, and now runs a campus apostolate in a public university, where I met him. That woman that always shows up? That’s his aunt. Years later, on assignment in Thailand, he met the man who killed his family - and forgave him, being moved by seeing how tenderly the man treated his children.
So often, when I want to complain about something related to the Church - like how Father can’t get a white alb, or we can’t afford chairs with kneelers, or that the Confession lines are too long (seriously, there’s actually a line for Confession!) I keep in mind that Fr. F. knew times not so long ago where he would have to risk death just to hear Mass, or go to Confession, or to even have a Catechism; that even today he would not dare to reenter his own native land; and that Catholics still suffer infinitely worse things than overly-long Confession lines, or lack of kneelers.
God bless our priests, especially those who have to serve in persecuted communities.
I met Fr. F. at Daily Mass here on Campus (It’s like Newman Club, but called something different.) He delivered homilies which really made you think (typical, given he’s a Jesuit), though his thick Vietnamese accent sometimes made him hard to understand. A rather funny fellow, too, after Mass and over coffee and donuts (It seems almost obligatory at Catholic events, seriously), and he loved to talk about his family, and how they would often play pranks on each other. I did notice an elderly Vietnamese lady kept attending all his Masses.
Later, I, bored, and for a lark, decided to search Father’s name over the Internet. Found something on the Jesuits’ website, and I took a look-see. And I was moved by this story:
Fr. F was born to devoutly Catholic parents in Saigon, then-South Vietnam. As a little boy he always was fascinated by the Jesuits, and their ease among the people. As an older boy he witnessed the Communists enter Saigon, after America had pulled out. One by one he saw priests arrested by the Communists, subject to torture and execution; the remainder went underground, supported by families like his. Eventually, things got bad enough that his family, with several siblings, aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents, booked illegal passage out of the country to Thailand.
Now these boats weren’t the kind you’d see, say, in Newport today. These were small fishing boats, intended maybe for ten people, with about forty packed onto it. Furthermore, they were just barely seaworthy. But it was all that they had to flee the Communists.
Now in those days, the seas between Vietnam and Thailand were rife with pirates, mostly poor fishermen who looked to get some money on the side. They would try to stop refugee boats, take valuables, sometimes people for forced labor or worse, especially the women. Now they came across a pirate boat, who told them to stop, but the skipper of the refugee boat refused. The pirates opened fire. Out of his large family, only him and his aunt survive. Eventually they reached shore and Thailand, and the first people to meet them at the refugee camp were, funnily enough, Jesuits.
Eventually he and his aunt made their way to the United States. He eventually entered the Jesuits, was ordained, and now runs a campus apostolate in a public university, where I met him. That woman that always shows up? That’s his aunt. Years later, on assignment in Thailand, he met the man who killed his family - and forgave him, being moved by seeing how tenderly the man treated his children.
So often, when I want to complain about something related to the Church - like how Father can’t get a white alb, or we can’t afford chairs with kneelers, or that the Confession lines are too long (seriously, there’s actually a line for Confession!) I keep in mind that Fr. F. knew times not so long ago where he would have to risk death just to hear Mass, or go to Confession, or to even have a Catechism; that even today he would not dare to reenter his own native land; and that Catholics still suffer infinitely worse things than overly-long Confession lines, or lack of kneelers.
God bless our priests, especially those who have to serve in persecuted communities.