My dear seminarians!
Easter Blessings to all of you!
I pray and hope that all of you had a Blessed Holy Week and Easter. For me personally as a priest, it was indeed a beautiful and moving experience, to renew my vows of priestly service to Christ and His Church on Tuesday evening with Cardinal DiNardo and all the priests of the Archdiocese at the Chrism Mass at the Co-Cathedral. In walking the way of the cross with Christ these days, I begin to reflect on how courageously Christ embraced His cross and suffering to walk to Calvary in order to offer the priestly sacrifice of Himself to God the Father for the salvation of the whole world. It is an invitation for you and for me to embrace our own cross. No wonder the Cardinal, in asking us to renew our commiment asked the priests:
“Are you resolved to unite yourselves more closely to Christ and to try to become more like him by joyfully sacrificing your own pleasrue and ambition to bring his peace and love to your brothers and sisters?”
My dear seminarians! I am convinced that only in prayers and deep rooted relationship with Christ would we find the strength to do so. Pope Benedict XVI in his message to the world for the 47th World Day of Vocation this coming April 25th mentioned that a priest and conscecrated religious must be a “man/woman of God” and “man/woman of communion.”
In that light, I am sending you the list of prayers partner. Please pray for your prayer partner seminarian everyday and, if possibly, send occasional emails/phone calls to encourage one another. In doing so, you allow yourself to be men of prayers as you lift each other up in the love and affection of Christ: “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another!” (Jn 13:35) Please pray especially for your brothers Jude, Eurel, Victor and Phong who are preparing for their deaconate ordination on May 15th.
Know that my thoughts and prayers are with you! Let us pray for one another that we may grow in charity and holiness!
In the Love of Christ the High Priest,
Fr. Dat
Tags: Blog, priesthood, seminarian, seminary, vocation
“Please pray for me Fr. Dat, I cannot find a job!” said a student who recently graduated from the university. He shared with me his struggle, explaining that now a days, one not only needs to have a good education but also some job experience on the resume in order to find a good job. In my prayers for the student, I also began to mediate on the resume of the very first Pope, who was handpicked by our Lord Jesus Christ when he walked on this earth. Do you know what would have been written on his resume?
The Resume of the first Pope
Name: Simon; nickname “Peter”
Education and Experience: Heavy labor fisherman (Mat 4:18)
Virtues: “Depart from me Lord, for I am a sinful man!” (Lk 5:8)
Faith: “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” (Mat 13:31)
Spiritual Depth: “Get behind me Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings!” (Mat 16:23)
Prayer Life: “So you could not keep watch with me for one hour?” (Mat 26:40)
Loyalty: “Amen, I say to you before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” (Mat 26:34); “I do not know the man [Jesus.]” (Mat 26:74)
It was this man with such a humanly terrible resume that Jesus called, renamed him Peter and chose him as the Rock upon which Christ builds his Church. It was to Peter that the Resurrected Christ said: “Feed my sheep!” and placed him as the first Pope of the Church. Why? Because, as Saint Paul said in 2 Cor 12:9, in human weakness, God’s grace shines ever more brightly.
Remember that at the end of his life, Peter heroically witnessed to Christ by dying upside down on the cross. From the moment of denying Jesus 3 times to his courageous martyrdom years later was an amazing story of God’s grace, transforming and molding Peter from a coward to saint, ready to die for Christ.
In my encounter with young people throughout the Archdiocese, I often run into men and women who might feel God’s call to the priestly and religious life; yet they push aside the prompting in their hearts because they feel a sense of “unworthiness.” They recognize on their life resume elements that they may not be too proud off: “I struggle with impurity,” “school is hard for me,” “I like girls/guys,” “I don’t pray too much,” “I get distracted in mass,” “I don’t know if I can live without a family.” To these responses, I say that when Jesus called Peter at the seashore, he did not expect Peter at the time to readily die upside down on the cross for Jesus. If that was the case, Peter would be the last person on earth to be invited by Christ. What Jesus saw in Peter was the willingness to let go of his net and to follow Christ; then the story of grace began to be written.
So for those who are discerning God’s call to priestly and religious life or the call to serve in some capacity in your parishes, remember that “God does not call the qualified, he qualifies the called!” Despite our life resume, if we are ready to let go of our nets, our fears, our unworthiness, then we will see how the Masterful Creator, who formed the beautiful universe out of nothingness, begins to make wonders out of who we are as children of God.
Fr. Dat Hoang
Director
Office of Vocations
Tags: archdiocese, Blog, call, catholic, christ, diocese, faith, god, houston, jesus, peter, pope, pray, prayer, priest, priesthood, religious, vocation
It was the New Year of 1988, the saddest and toughest New Year in my life. Only some weeks before that, I said good-bye to my parents, my family and friends and my beloved homeland of many beautiful childhood memories. In the search for brighter future, for freedom and for the possibility of entering the seminary, I left Vietnam together with my aunt, my younger brother and four cousins. We fled on a small boat, tightly packed with 40 people. After some days on the ocean, we arrived at an island in Thailand; and our very first encounter in the new land was with the pirates, who took all our money and valuable belongings. For a period of about 2 months, while waiting for help to arrive, we lived as beggars. Every day we went to the small Thai village to ask for food. Some days we were lucky, and some other days we came home empty. It was the time of New Year. I remembered feeling very sad. I thought of the joyful colors of the New Year festivity in Vietnam, the family visits, the greetings and the delicious dishes in the presence of my family and friends. Now I was far away from home, penniless and the future ahead of me was a complete uncertainty. I recalled swallowing my pains and walked down to the Thai village with my brother and my cousins to beg for food. It was a bad day for us. We came back to our place sad, hungry and tired. As soon as we climbed into the wooden cottage, we noticed our aunt sitting there with a plate of food. “Did you find anything today?” she asked. She could tell from the look on our faces that it was one of those unlucky days. She handed us the plate and said: “I had some already, go ahead and eat!” Within a split second everything was gone.
A little while later, I walked around the wooded area and noticed my aunt crying under a tree. I walked over, sat down next to her and found out that she had not eaten all day. My heart ached. A painful thought ran through my mind: “Oh auntie, where can I find you some food?” At the same time, I felt as if a mystical arrow of love had just pierced through my heart. In her presence, I glimpsed and tasted the unconditional Love of God. What she did left an imprint in my heart; and till this day it reminds me to live my vocation as a priest so that I may love and serve others.
“My vocation is to love!” Saint Therese of the Child Jesus once exclaimed. Like her, I am convinced that at the heart of all vocations is the call to love God and others. I believe Saint Paul knew it deep in his heart when he wrote: “If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing” (1 Cor 13: 2).
So my dear friends! As I send you my warmest New Year Greetings, I invite you to join me this year to be heroically different. While our culture keeps telling us we have to have a lot for ourselves, our Lord is challenging us to make sacrifices and to die to self as He did on the cross. I am reminded of Pope Benedict’s words to the young people of the world: “We were not created for comfort, but for greatness!” If we each day try to mirror the Lord in dying to self for others, we will find our true great self and our vocation!
God’s abundant joy and blessing to you in this New Year!
Fr. Dat
Tags: fr. dat's blog, Vocation Director
In his book Pilgrims on the Road of Hope, Cardinal Francis Van Thuan wrote about a boy named Valentia, who was orphaned at the age of 5 in a poor town. He started to polish shoes for a living. Every time a customer paid him, he made a sign of the cross in gratitude to God. His friends made fun of him: “you don’t even have food to eat and you are trying to keep your faith?” When Valentia turned 17, the town’s theater group allowed him to play the role of the devil in a theatrical play. During the actual performance, all of a sudden the rain came with loud lightning. Like all the other times of fear, Valentia knelt down to make the sign of the cross, forgetting that he was in the play. The crowd broke out in laughter, thinking the “devil” was making a joke without realizing that he was truly praying. Later, the people of the town came to know about Valentia and his situation. Together, they pitched in their money to help the young man, who obtained his doctorate and became successful at the age of 30. So, even the “devil” made time to pray. What about us? Do we pray always and in all situations of life? As vocation director, sometimes parents approach me and asked me what they can do to teach their children about vocations. I always tell them that the very first thing they have to do is to teach their children to pray by praying together as a family, taking them for a short time of adoration before going out for pizza or movie, etc. And for those who are trying to listen to God’s will or discerning a vocation in your life, the very first step in the process of discernment is to deepen one’s prayer life. To discern God’s Will and God’s call is not to solve a puzzle or a math problem but rather to encounter Christ. Once we have met Him and know Him, He will never fail us. He will strengthen us and show us the way we should walk. Pope Benedict XVI once said: “Whoever wants to be a friend of Jesus and become his authentic disciple – be it seminarian, priest, religious or lay person – must cultivate an intimate friendship with him in meditation and prayer.” So if we want to cultivate a culture of vocations, we must first cultivate in our home and in our parishes a culture of prayer and silence against a world bombarded with noises and information. For those who are beginners, it could be as simple as committing to 15 minutes of silent prayer a day, or stopping by a church for the 15 minutes of silent prayer, especially in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. Fifteen minutes is really nothing, especially compared to the time we watch a football game or a TV show; but you will be surprised how just a few minutes a day set aside to lift your hearts up the Lord can begin to transform your lives in an incredible way because God’s love and generosity is beyond our imagining.
[If you have questions that you want Fr. Dat to answer on his blog, please send an email at vocations@archgh.org]
“Listen to me for one moment and you will see that only the service of God will console us and make us happy in the midst of all the miseries of life. To accomplish it, you do not need to leave either your belongings, or your parents, or even your friends, unless they are leading you to sin. You have no need to go and spend the rest of your lives in the desert to weep there for your sins. If that were necessary for us, indeed, we should be very happy to have such a remedy for our ills. But no, a father and a mother of a family can serve God by living with their children and bringing them up in a Christian way. A servant can very easily serve God and his master, with nothing to stop him. No, my dear bretheren, The way of life that means serving God changes nothing in all that we have to do. On the contrary, we simply do better all the things we must do!”
– St. John Vianney
Tags: christ, god, houston, priest, vocation, year of the priest
