When Archbishop François-Xavier Van Thuan was in a Vietnamese prison for his faith, he had very few consolations. As the nephew of a president and an archbishop, the Communist authorities thought he would be an influential figure in any resistance movement. So, without trial, the Archbishop was imprisoned. He spent 13 years in prison, nine of which in solitary confinement.
There were, however, some kind guards who met Van Thuan’s practical needs. They slipped him scraps of paper on which he wrote Scripture passages, and thus he had a makeshift bible. Guards also sent through a piece of wood and some wire, out of which he made a crucifix – he hid the crucifix in a bar of soap to avoid confiscation.
The authorities also permitted the Archbishop to write letters. In them he asked his friends to send him “his medicine”; and so, bottles of cough syrup arrived, but filled with wine. He got hold of some bread, and many times celebrated Mass in his confinement. One author says of Archbishop Van Thuan: “His prison cell became his cathedral.” With a scrap of bread in one hand and a drop of wine in the other, the Archbishop fed his soul.
We cannot imagine that Archbishop Van Thuan went through every rubric of the Mass in prison, or that he recited the prayers of the altar in full, let alone that he wore all the vestments or observed the liturgical season in every detail. The risk of getting caught was ever-present. So, he left those traditional elements to one side until he was released, when he faithfully took them up again.
Instead, Archbishop Van Thuan went straight to the heart. He wrote lovingly of being in God’s hands at that time: “My plans, my activities, my efforts were all for nothing. I wanted to do so many things to serve my people, but I could not.” He wrote about Christ crucified, whom he noted was “immobilised” like him: “Yet it was from there that he performed his greatest deed, the redemption of sinners.”
The Lord wants us too to go straight to the heart. We surround ourselves with so much worldly concern and outward show as to overlook that the fact that we have no core, no heart. The Lord rails against the Pharisees because they have replaced the commandment of God with their own rules. They took the priestly laws for Temple purity and applied them generally to all the people. The effect was to insist on outward piety rather than inward devotion. The Lord’s message to us is to ensure that every act we perform in faithfulness to divine law is done with love, is done with spiritual devotion, done with heart. Otherwise, we are mere activists putting on no more than a display. There must be love for God and love for neighbour in us.
There are some people who want the Church radically to change up the way things are done. They want to tear up her constitution and have us reinvent ourselves. Sure, there are always things we can do better as a human society. But the Lord will have us first turn inwards, towards our heart, the better to see what must then be done. Unless we are free from sin, we’re going to introduce into the Church the same faults each of us has. The Lord wants us to see ourselves in his light, a light which will make us both pure and wise.
To our radical reformers it must be asked when the last time was they went to confession, or when was the last time they did a little penance? Light penances are good for self-discipline, which is necessary to resist temptation. We cannot imagine that our view on the Church is an objective one; and if unconfessed or untamed sin is present, it will be relatively more distorted than most.
But there are certainly some things we can change if we need to, to take one example: priestly formation. There is nothing in the Scriptures about the necessity of seminaries as such for the training of priests. Over our long history, our priests have been formed in many ways, predominantly in apprenticeships and seminaries. We certainly may change up the institution in which our priests are formed without doing violence to any divine law. Yet, we would still have to observe faithfully that Christ chose men for his first priests, and these he formed himself in a community together over a few years. They heard from him what we read in Scripture. They had the best seminary experience the Church has ever seen. So long as we keep the divine law, that men must well-formed for ordained ministry, we can adapt current structures to fit present circumstances.
So, we ask the Lord to make us wise to ourselves. May he make us wise to our own faults, to the acts which defile us. May he direct the spiritual reform of the Church, his members. May we allow his mercy to shape us, so that we may work faithfully and peaceably for the good of all.
Fr Paul Rowse, OP
Parish Priest.
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