Pastor’s Desk

By Fr. Hien Nguyen

2. Vocation Culture in the Family

2.2 Prayer

The only way our children can hear God’s call is to know how to listen to God and to talk to God, or simply to pray. How can we expect our children to hear when they are “deaf” and to talk when they are “dumb”? We need to teach them to communicate with God, and an effective way is to gather as a family and pray. There are families that get together every evening, light a candle, say the Confiteor, the Creed, a decade of the Rosary, and conclude with a period of silence. The whole duration only takes about seven minutes which will not be a burden for the young (babies) and prolong the interest for the old (teenagers). The practice of family praying together will develop a habit for the children to pray and learn how to pray even on their own.

The family can also help the members to appreciate and enter more deeply into the Sacred Words of God through sharing stories particularly of the Bible and the Saints. Stories telling are an effective way to communicate specially to the young. Their natural curiosity and imagination absorb what being read or told. Pictures are also a good method to share with them about the faith that can express thousand of words and imprint in them long-lasting memories. I still remember not only stories about my patron saint that my parents told me but also the patron saints of my siblings that I also heard. Every feast-day, we celebrate our patron saints like a birthday celebration with a special meal, a cake, and Mass. Currently, we replaced birthdays with parties and gifts and teaching our children to indulge and consume. I still remember the exciting Bible story of Joseph and how he rescued his brothers and family; Moses’ escape and walk through the Red Sea; the miracle of water being changed into wine; the multiplication of bread and fish; Peter walking on the water, etc. Parents should encourage the children to read by making Catholic Bibles available to them. Parents must provide books and magazines that exemplify the lives of the saints who can inspire the children to follow their footsteps and make them their role models. There are Catholic Bibles trivia games that the family can spend time together at recreation for a fun learning experience.

Another way to help the children immerse in Sacred Scripture is to have the Breaking of the Word. Parents can simply spend fifteen minutes in one of the evenings during the week and instead of having evening prayer together use the Sunday Mass Gospel to have the family listen. Afterwards, allow each member to share their life experience in the light of the Gospel. In this way, the children are prepared and look forward to the Sunday Mass. This is an opportunity to help the children to understand better about the teaching of the Church through the Word and its application in life

Symbolism also helps instill in the family members the significant meaning it represents. Just like sacrament and sacramental are visible signs of the hidden realities that give grace. It is important then to have in the home these sacred signs. There should be a place in the home where a small altar or shrine dedicated to be a worshipping place, a prayer center (a focal point) where family can get together to pray each day. A cross, a statue, a painting that reminds us of the Lord, our Mother, and the saints are strongly encouraged. Each room should have a cross and other helpful sacramentals such as a blessed palm, a rosary, an icon, a bible, etc. These will remind us of the significant meanings that inspire us to live our faith. I remember one of my younger brother favourite things was to light the candle on the home shrine before family prayer and blow it out afterward. Another beautiful sign of sacramental is a cross-chain, a scapular, a religious medal that one can wear on the body to be inspired. We need to bring back sacred signs into our family home and life. It is unfortunate to see that the religious symbols in the home have been replaced by the contemporary signs of prosperity and commercialism: wide, flat screened Televisions, computers, immodest arts, etc.

By Fr. Hien Nguyen

2. Vocation Culture in the Family

2.1 Domestic Church: The Foundation

Pope John Paul II in many of his writings and homilies has mentioned numerously that “the Christian family is the first place where vocations develop. It is a seminary or novitiate in germ.” In light of this it is vital for families to nurture, encourage, and promote vocations. Pope J.P. II described the family in his writings often as the domestic Church where the parents have the responsibility and right through their union of love give birth to their children and provide them the basic rights, needs, faith and charity in cooperation with God to build His kingdom. In the Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio Pope J.P. II expressed this point beautifully:

For Christian parents the mission to educate, a mission rooted, as we have said, in their participation in God’s creating activity, has a new specific source in the sacrament of marriage, which consecrates them for the strictly Christian education of their children: that is to say, it calls upon them to share in the very authority and love of God the Father and Christ the Shepherd, and in the motherly love of the Church, and it enriches them with wisdom, counsel, fortitude and all the other gifts of the Holy Spirit in order to help the children in their growth as human beings and as Christians.

It is in this domestic Church where a child is first developed and learned the basic human dignity. Home is not intrinsically the physical building but the foundation that builds through the members of the family. “It is here that the father of the family, the mother, children, and all members of the family exercise the priesthood of the baptized in a privileged way by the reception of the sacraments, prayer and thanksgiving, the witness of a holy life, and self-denial and active charity. Thus the home is the first school of Christian life and a school for human enrichment. Here one learns endurance and the joy of work, fraternal love, generous – even repeated – forgiveness, and above all divine worship in prayer and the offering of one’s life.”

There are two necessary and immediate steps we can take to foster the vocation culture in the family. First, we need to teach our children to pray. Second, we need to help our children to cultivate a spirit of willingness to make a sacrifice and self-denial. To be continued

John Paul II, Homily in Pune – Apostolic Pilgrimage to India, February 10, 1986,7.

Vatican Council II, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, ed. Flannery,

A., New York 1996, 362, n.11.

John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, Rome November 22, 1981, n. 38.

The Catechism of Catholic Church, New York 1994, 462, n. 1657.

By Fr. Hien Nguyen

Philanthropic Stage / Psycho-social / Illumination

An unexpected purification came when the war between the Communist from the North and the Republic from the South ended on April 30, 1975. The Communist officially took control of the whole country. John’s father who was a politician for the Republic in the South went in hiding and avoided concentration camp. When his parents recognized the danger, they decided to leave everything behind, packed the essentials, and took the children to a rice farm in the Southern part of Vietnam near the Mekong River. There they changed their names and lived on God’s providence.

A senior couple who had an empty dilapidated home on their farm allowed the family to temporarily use it. They started a new life all over again. In the desolation of not able to keep their identities, to go to school, to go to Church, they began to doubt the love of God. John’s family lived in fear of the communists, fear of how they could find food for the next day, fear of being arrested, fear of losing their love ones, fear of losing their own lives.

Everyday John’s task was to go with his brothers to catch fish or to go into the forest to trap birds for food. His sister would walk along the river to find vegetation. His mother and father scattered through fields to collect unwanted rice stocks. It was a time where they were in hunger and thirst; in cold and nakedness; in labour and weariness; in persecutions and many reproaches. However, it was in these circumstances that John learned the meaning of detachment. That life was more than just what he could gain and accumulate. He discovered happiness was not only to fulfill his wants, but instead it was what he can do for others.

It was when they were “strip naked” of their lives that they realized the needs of others and how others also needed them. The activities became actions and behaviour toward others. “The motivation force behind these behaviours is the awareness of our own limitations and our insufficiency as persons, which makes us aware of our need for others.”

What was important to John of his actual-self: manifest self, latent self, and social self were stripped away. What he was considered to be his values, needs, motivations, affections were all robbed by the communist. But through this purging John grew through a Moral Conversion that “changes the criterion of [his] decisions and choices from satisfactions to values, even for value against satisfaction when value and satisfaction conflict.”

During the difficult time hiding from the communist, John had different responsibilities with his family to support his parents to keep the family together. He began to shift his values toward Institutional ideal. Here it was “the demands of the role of what the institution proposes to [him]; so it is the total of the expectations, demands and requests others make on [him].” At this period, what become important to John were family bond, education, freedom, and faith. His Ideal-self or more particular his personal ideal was to become a good self-giving person with an education to help and free those who are suffering in his country. Obviously the dialectic between these personal ideal-self and his actual circumstances self-made it hard to come to realization because of the limitation created by the Communists. John was not free.

5. A. Cencini – A. Manenti, A, Psychology and formation: Structures and Dynamic, 21.

6. B. Lonergan, Method in Theology, 240.

7. A. Cencini – A. Manenti, Psychology and formation: Structures and Dynamic, 175.

His relationship with God at this time was not consistent. God to him was more of an Intuitional ideal because for John He was more of a set of “do-s and don’t-s”. He was the God that John met when he was able to go to Church with his family or the God that he talked to when it came to family prayer time. John manipulated his God and loves Him when what he asked was being answered and hated Him when things were not going well. It was dialectic between the subjective “me” and the objective God that John wanted to be in control and not God. The actual self was still dominating in John.

To be continue next week

By Fr. Hien Nguyen

1.3 A Story, a Perspective, a Development of a Call (continuation of Vocation’s reflection by Fr. Hien)

Here I would like to share a story and an experience of a person I know well who is called John to illustrate the faith that he has encountered and his vocation journey through the process of human and spiritual development in the dialectic union between his subjective self and the objective God. I will divide the story into three different stages and intertwine the encounter with means, conversions, method, structure, etc.

Egocentric Stage / Psycho-physiological / Purgation

John was a child born during the time when South Vietnam was thriving with the aid of the American. He lived a life of luxury with its conveniences. He had the best quality food that one could find in the region. In his home there were two servants who attended to the family needs. John had his own driver who drove him to day care school and picked him up afterwards. His concerns were focused on having good health, study well, eat well, sleep well, and enjoy whatever he wanted. His life could be a summarization of “riches, friends, stature, beauty, talents, etc.

Like many people, John sought for happiness in the lowest stage of the development of a human being. It was only on the appetitive, and instinctive level. He looked for immediate gratification. He lived on the psycho-physiological level that “covers the psychic activities strictly linked to the physical states of well-being or discomfort determined by the satisfaction or non-satisfaction of some fundamental physiological needs of the organism.” His happiness measured by the amount of consumption of material goods. John’s self-esteem based on his talents, success in his studies, and looks. His self-image depended upon his popularity with peers and others. It was a life of indulgence and the “I” was the priority. His values are all his actual needs and religion was an activity like school that he did and nothing more. There is no desire for God but an obligation from his parents.

John was the replica of the age where Pope John Paul II has already prophesized that “supplies material goods not just in order that they may serve man to carry out creative and useful activities, but more and more… to satisfy the senses, the excitement he derives from them, momentary pleasure, an ever greater multiplicity of sensations.” It was ever more evident on the effect and the result of what our Holy Father was so worried about. The children of this time develop to be “the child who lives only on sensations, he looks for ever-new sensations… And thus he becomes, without realizing it, a slave of this modern passion. Satiating himself with sensations, he often remains passive intellectually; the intellect does not open to search of truth; the will remains bound by habit which it is unable to oppose.”

In our field of study one can identify John’s “ego” through the functions of corporal sense, appreciation, expansion, self-image, proprium, and self-identity. All the functions and symbols described perfectly who John was and what his values were. They are supposed to be mediation values but instead became the terminal values. Life was based on the foundation of utilitarian and individualistic.

1. A. Cencini – A. Manenti, Psychology and formation: Structures and Dynamics,20.

2. John Paul II, General Audience, Wednesday, 21 March 1979, 2.

3. John Paul II, General Audience, Wednesday, 21 March 1979, 2.

4. A. Cencini

By Fr. Hien Nguyen

Secondary Calling (continuation of Vocation’s reflection by Fr. Hien)

Secondary vocation, although less important than the first, is also a call from God. In this secondary call, we are invited by God to live a single or married life here on earth to respond to the primary call which is the participation in the divine life. From the single state of life we have different types: consecrated, religious men and women, priest, and single. The other state of life is married.

It is important to note that no matter what states in life we cooperate with God – whether choosing to live a single or married life, we are responsible to partake in God’s life and His salvation plan for us. For example, a priest – a secondary vocation – lives the priestly life to respond to the primary vocation, a call to live eternally with God.

A religious sister or brother – a secondary vocation – lives the consecrated life in responding to the primary call, to participate in the divine life. A married couple – a secondary vocation – lives as husband and wife and parent to respond to the first call, to share their lives in God’s.

A vocation is totally different from an occupation. An occupation is a job that helps a person to make a living whereas a vocation is a life the person lives.

Let’s take as an example our parents. Their vocation is to live out their married life, but their jobs – an essential part of their lives – are what they do to make money to support the family. Our parents, (mother or father) could be a pilot, a police officer, a doctor, etc. The job is part of the person, and it belongs to the mother or father as an adjective to a noun, an accident to a substance, or in this case an occupation to a vocation.

Parents, who live a secondary vocation of marriage, have many different jobs in their lives. Part of their vocation is to feed the children, to change diapers, to educate their kid in the faith and life, etc. The secondary vocation of a priest and part of the vocation is to celebrate Mass, anoint the sick, baptize, bring God’s forgiveness and mercy to sinners, etc. However, as for a job, he can be working at the office at the chancery to recruit more men and women to enter the life of the priesthood or religious.

These explanations will give some clarity in the discerning and help to distinguish the priority of vocations and what predicates to them.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, in you we contemplate the splendor of true love, to you we turn with trust.

Holy Family of Nazareth, grant that our families too may be places of communion & prayer.

The great thing about walking with God in life is that there is always the opportunity to start anew – God always offers us a new day and a new dawn, no matter what has gone before. At the start of the New Year, why not take a moment to thank Him for last year, ask His forgiveness for where you have failed, and dedicate this new year to Him – to serve Him and love Him afresh.

A New Year’s Prayer

O sacred and adorable Trinity, hear our prayers on behalf of our holy Father, Pope Francis, our Bishops, our clergy, and for all that are in authority over us. Bless, we beseech Thee, during the coming year, the whole Catholic Church; nonbelievers; soften the hearts of sinners so that they may return to Thy friendship; give prosperity to our country and peace among the nations of the world; pour down Thy blessings upon our friends, relatives, and acquaintances, and upon our enemies, if we have any; assist the poor and the sick; have pity on the souls of those whom this year has taken from us; and do Thou be merciful to those who during the coming year will be summoned before Thy judgment seat. May all our actions be preceded by Thy inspirations and carried on by Thy assistance, so that all our prayers and works, having been begun in Thee, may likewise be ended through Thee. Amen

Dear parishioners and friends,

We would like to take this opportunity to Thank each of you who helped with the many preparations required for our special celebration of Christmas. We would also like to thank everyone for the wonderful gifts, cards and prayers generously given to all of us here at St. Ann’s, 3 priests, 3 sisters and one very grateful secretary.

May the peace, joy and love of Christ reign in your hearts now and in the coming year 2018.

The day of joy returns, Father in
Heaven, and crowns another year with
peace and good will in the Holy Spirit.
Help us rightly to remember the birth
of Jesus, that we may share in the joy of Mary and Joseph, in
the song of the angels, the gladness of the shepherds, and the
worship of the wise men.
Close the doors of hate and open the doors
of love all over the world?
Let kindness come with every gift and good desires
with every greeting.
Deliver us from evil, by the blessing that Christ brings,
and teach us to be merry with clean hearts.
May the Christmas morning make us happy to be His children,
And the Christmas evening bring us to our bed with grateful
thoughts, forgiving and forgiven, for Jesus’ sake.

Amen

St. Nicholas and his helpers

By Fr. Hien Nguyen

What is Vocation?

1.1 Primary Calling

From the discernment perspective, Vocation derives from the Latin and means a calling “Vocare”. It is a summons from God to His creatures to respond to His plan for them. Vocations can be divided into two categories: primary and secondary vocation. Primary vocation is the most important and universal call from the Father, who, “by a free and hidden plan of His own wisdom and goodness, created the whole world. His plan was to raise men to a participation of the divine life. Fallen in Adam, God the Father did not leave men to themselves, but ceaselessly offered helps to salvation, in view of Christ, the Redeemer who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature. All the elect, before time began, the Father foreknew and pre- destined to become conformed to the image of His Son, that he should be the firstborn among many brethren.”

We must understand that our purpose in life is not here on earth but an eternal life in the unity of the love of the Trinity. We, “all the faithful of Christ of whatever rank or status, are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity” Therefore regardless of who we are – single or married, religious or lay faithful – all are called primarily to a participation of our lives in the Trinity. It is a calling of living our spiritual relationship in a person of man created. It is a supernatural journey to God.

Looking through the lenses of psychology and spirituality of human development, Christian spiritual experience is an encounter between God and man. It is a dialogue initiated by God through his grace as a gift and responded by man. It is a respond not to an unknown content but to a precise purpose of what God wants us to be. We, “all the faithful of Christ of whatever rank or status are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity.” This fullness of Christian spiritual life is the profound meeting of two persons: Christ and the individual. In the psychological language this meeting can be seen as the encounter of the Objective Values of Jesus Christ and the Subjective Values of the individual. To have a genuine respond to the Objective Values which is God, man needs to assimilate this objective pole by making his actual values, needs, affections, attitudes, and his motivation the same as the Values of Christ. This can also be called Self-transcendence. An individual fails to respond to God authentically when he embraces one pole and ignores the other. Fr. Imoda describes this situation as an immature Christian.

A Christian is called to live an authentic life that is being what he says he is. He comes to this authenticity through a process that will help him to integrate the two poles and lead him to self-transcendence. According to Lonergan, the transcendental method is the scheme that everyone puts into action in the Cognitive decisional process. It is an intentional and conscious development through four stages: experiencing, understanding, affirming, and deciding. Through these stages of development an individual will go through different types of transcendent: egocentric, philanthropic, and theocentric. The path of self-transcendence involves the whole person: his mind, will, heart, body, soul, etc. When this whole person reaches out to the others and assimilates toward the objective pole, he enters into a new horizon that makes him to accommodate and change. The term that Lonergan uses for this change is conversion: intellectual, moral, and religious.

By Fr. Hien Nguyen

WHY ARE WE CALLED TO PRAY FOR THE DEAD?

The souls in Purgatory are completely engaged with the beautiful yet difficult cleansing of themselves, to be made pure and whole for life in Heaven, and there are no “shortcuts” for them to access for themselves in this process (we have plenty on earth – the sacraments, spiritual devotions, indulgences, etc.). Also, each person’s degree of purgation will match the degree to which they have sinned – just as in a legal system the severity of jail time is supposed to “match” the severity of the crime – and in this way justice is achieved. However, in God’s infinite mercy, He allows the Church Militant (you and I) to “pay the debt” of each other’s sins through our sacrifices of prayer, fasting, and especially the Mass. This grace extends to the suffering souls in Purgatory, and in this way we can lessen their suffering and speed their entry into Heaven.

WHAT IS PURGATORY?

Imagine you’ve skipped across a tar field to arrive on the other side, where Jesus in all His love and mercy and goodness is awaiting you with open arms. When you get there, however, you find that your clothes are filthy and you desire to be made clean before embracing Beauty himself. The condition in which you are purged of this filth (i.e., the stain of sin) is called Purgatory. It involves great suffering because burning shame and deep remorse are painful; when Peter betrayed Jesus, the Lord turned and met his gaze, and Peter “went out and began to weep bitterly” (Luke 23: 60-62). However, Purgatory should most of all be understood as a profound expression of God’s love; it is His way of making it possible for us to be with Him “as the pure and unstained souls He had meant us to be from the beginning”, allowing us to become truly ourselves. Therefore, for the souls in Purgatory, a deep-rooted joy pervades all of their suffering – it is the joy of knowing that they are securely destined for Heaven.