April 25, 2009
After lengthy journey, Cistercian brother will be ordained a priest
By Denise MacLachlan
Herald staff
Brother Vincent Nguyen, a member of the Cistercian Order of Our Lady of Chou Son Sacramento, visits the Diocesan Pastoral Center in Sacramento April 13. He will be ordained to the priesthood on May 2. Cathy Joyce/Herald photo
Cistercian Brother Vincent Hau Dinh Nguyen, a member of monastic community
of Our Lady of Chau Son Sacramento, will be ordained to the priesthood during
a 9 a.m. Mass on Saturday, May 2 in the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament
in Sacramento.
Presiding will be Bishop Emeritus Bishop K. Weigand, who ordained Brother Nguyen to the transitional deaconate last October at the Abbey of New Clairvaux in Vina.
Brother Nguyen’s journey to the priesthood began more than 20 years ago and 7,000 miles away in a Catholic parish in south-central Vietnam.
Brother Nguyen, who is 41, is one of four children of a devout Catholic family who grew coffee and potatoes in the parish of Vinh Phoc in the highlands of south-central Vietnam.
He first thought of becoming a religious when he was a 17-year old cantor at his parish. He sang in the Vinh Phoc parish choir, and vividly recalls cantoring at a Mass where catechumens were present. That experience began to draw him to religious life, he said.
Dominican and Franciscan religious helped him to teach the younger members of the choir, he said, and while working at the parish he came to know several priests and seminarians. Brother Nguyen became more intrigued with religious life, he said, but he remained home with his family, farming the land.
Nearly a decade later, wen Brother Nguyen was 25, a relative of one of the monks at the Cistercian community of Our Lady of Chau Son returned from a visit to the monastery. He described the life the monks were living and gave Brother Nguyen a copy of the order’s constitution, or rule. He read the document with great excitement, he said. He wanted to see that life for himself.
So he arranged to visit the monastery in the highlands of Da Lat almost immediately. He lived with the community for two months, he said, praying with the monks and keeping the same schedule, and he felt great happiness. “If the life makes you happy, it fits you,” he said.
Brother Nguyen joined the community that year, becoming a postulant at Our Lady of Chau Son monastery in 1993. As a Cisterican monk, he expected to live with the cloistered community in Vietnam for the rest of his life. He made his first vows in 1995 and his final vows in 2000.
But then his community sent a branch of the cloister to take root on another continent.
In September 2000, when Chau Son Abbot Frances Xavier Phan Bao Luyen visited the Trappist community of the Abbey of New Clairvaux in Vina, the abbot instructed Brother Nugyen’s brother monk, Father Dominic Tran, to establish an adjunct community of Chau Son in California. And in 2005, Abbot Francis sent Brother Nguyen to join him.
Brother Nguyen has a cheerful, gentle presence. He has moved from a community of 160 monks living on a mountain in Vietnam to a community of eight monks living on the delta farmland of California’s central valley near Walnut Grove. In many ways, his life has become radically different from the life he lived in Vietnam.
He studies English now, speaking easily in light conversation but still dropping briefly into Vietnamese when discussing his commitment to prayer and to monastic life.
On the day he spoke with The Herald at the Diocesan Pastoral Center in Sacramento, he and Father Tran used their day beyond the monastery’s walls to run errands, heading to Home Depot to buy nails, still wearing their monks’ habits. Life in California is very different in life in Vietnam, Father Tran said. Brother Nguyen laughed in response.
But in the most important ways, their life hasn’t changed, Brother Nguyen noted. The monks still stop to pray seven times a day. Brother Nguyen says that prayer is core of monastic life.
He quotes Pope Benedict XVI, noting that “prayer is dialogue with God.”
“Prayer is the engine of the world,” he quotes. “Nothing is possible without prayer. Everything is possible with prayer.”
Brother Nguyen explains that for him, becoming a priest “is the grace of God.” The community needs priests to celebrate Mass, and his superior is willing, he added, so he is “very happy and very blessed” to be ordained.
In becoming a priest, he said, he looks forward to a greater communion with God in his prayer life and a greater capacity to serve his community with all of his heart. For a monk, he added, serving the community goes hand in hand with prayer.
On May 3 at 2 p.m., Brother Nguyen will celebrate his Mass of thanksgiving with his community, with his fellow priests and religious of the diocese, and with the monastery’s extended community of lay supporters at Our Lady of Chau Son Sacramento.
