The Road of Hope: A Gospel from Prison

By Frances Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan

Cardinal Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan is one of the most inspiring voices of the twentieth century, a true modern-day hero. During a time of political unrest in Vietnam, he was arrested for his faith and spent the next thirteen years in prison. There he endured harsh treatment and deplorable conditions. Nine of those thirteen years he spent in solitary confinement.

During those long years of isolation and imprisonment, instead of giving in to despair and self-pity, Van Thuan learned his greatest lesson. He found God in the darkness; he was never alone, never without comfort. He discovered that his life still had purpose, even in the midst of incredible suffering. He began using scraps of paper to compose messages of hope and courage for his fellow believers, which were smuggled out and eventually published. These short messages of encouragement, 1,001 in total, were instantly popular with the Vietnamese people, many of whom also knew what it was like to suffer for their faith.

And now, from the damp darkness of a prison cell thousands of miles away, these messages of hope and light have passed through barbed wire, traveled across oceans, and been handed down over many years to speak to your heart today to offer you hope and light for your path.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781635820966

Book preview

Pham

PROLOGUE

The Road of Hope

My child,

I have traveled along life’s road,

where I have experienced both joys and sorrows;

but always I have been overflowing with hope

because I have our Lord and his mother Mary by my side.

If the Lord permits me to choose again,

I would not choose any other road but this.

I have been happy and full of joy because I have

hope in the Lord and I have learned to love.

Today, as our Lord gives me a few moments to be close to his side,

I shall begin to record for you,

as I have wanted to do for a long time, the experiences of my life.

I approach this task with a feeling of humility.

These are the words of a father, a father who does

not have anything new to say to his child.

This father simply repeats some words of advice

which come truly from the heart, words which so

many times before have been gently poured

into your ear and heart

in the midst of the noisy activity of the world around you.

It is my earnest hope

that these simple thoughts may spread light and

peace so that you may become an apostle animated

with a spirit of prayer and a spirit of love.

May the grace and peace of our Lord be with you

on this journey of hope!

Your father,

+ Francois Xavier

One: Departure

If you are still bound by a gold chain, you are not ready for this road.

1. Our Lord guides you on to this road so that you will go and bear fruit (John 15:16) which will endure. The road is called The Road of Hope because it is overflowing with hope and is as beautiful as hope itself. And why should you not have hope when it is the Lord Jesus himself with whom you set off on the way to the Father?

2. The itinerary for this Road of Hope has three stages:

• Departure: Renounce yourself.

• Duty: Take up your cross daily.

• Perseverance: Follow me.

3. If you have given up everything, but still have not denied yourself, you have actually not given up anything at all. Unless you give up yourself, you will—slowly perhaps, but surely— gather to yourself once again those very things which you gave up in the first place.

4. Abraham set off on his journey with the hope of reaching the promised land. Moses set off with the hope of rescuing the People of God from their slavery. Our Lord Jesus Christ came down from heaven with the hope of saving all mankind.

5. What difference does it make if you leave home for some distant place, perhaps even thousands of miles away, if you continue to bring along all your bad habits, your sinful self?

6. Saints are fools for Christ’s sake (1 Corinthians 4:10). Thus, the making of saints is beyond the scope of the wisdom of the world.

7. If you wish to set off on this road, you must go regardless of what other people may say to ridicule you. The Three Magi set off hoping to find the newborn Savior, and they found him. St. Francis Xavier set off hoping to save souls, and he found them. St. Maria Goretti set off to resist temptation, hoping thus to meet her Lord, and she met him.

8. You must lose in order to gain, die in order to live, abandon all else in order to meet the Lord. The Magi risked dangers and ridicule; St. Francis Xavier left his parents and country, forsaking worldly possessions and pleasure forever; St. Maria Goretti gave up her life.

9. Keep going forward on the Road of Hope, regardless of the often heartrending pleas of those you love. St. Paul knew that imprisonment and afflictions await me (Acts 20:23) and Jesus himself foresaw that the road to Jerusalem would lead to his great Passion (see Matthew 16:21). Yet both continued onwards.

10. Rich or poor, praised or ridiculed, noble or lowly—your station in life does not matter at all if you have decided to advance along this road, waiting in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior Jesus Christ.

11. Our Lord declared, I am the truth (John 14:6). He did not say that newspapers are the truth, radio is the truth, or television is the truth. Which truth will you follow?

12. Keep moving forward relentlessly. Do not give up. Nobody will follow the person who turns back.

13. Do not give in to sensuality, do not give in to laziness, do not give in to selfishness. You cannot call black white, bad good, or dishonesty truth.

14. Are you a person who says yes to everything? Do you perhaps say yes to many gods, many religions, and a variety of moral standards? Do you have a flexible conscience which can accommodate itself to any situation and say yes to its values? Which road will you take?

15. Refusal to give in to false values is neither pride nor egoism nor stubbornness. Rather, it proves your wholehearted adherence to your own standards.

16. You should be prepared to reject wealth and position—to give your very life if necessary—to preserve your ideals, your honor, and, most importantly, your faith. Never behave otherwise: To do so would be to lose everything.

Two: Duty

Duty is the passport to heaven.

17. Duty points out the will of God for you in the present moment.

18. Some people do not shoulder the cross because they imagine it to be too heavy. Still other people are eager to shoulder everyone else’s cross but refuse to carry their own and even seek to foist it on to another person’s shoulders.

19. Make your duties holy. Help others to holiness through your duties. Grow in holiness by the way you carry out your duties.

20. If everyone were faithful to their duties in life, growth in personal holiness would, while renewing their own hearts, also renew their families and the whole world around them.

21. Despite any superficial appearance of holiness, a person who neglects his duties in life is a spiritual fraud. Should he work miracles, they will be both out of time and out of place and a cause of confusion, not edification. Moreover, such a person would be difficult to live with.

22. Some laypeople associate holiness with formal prayer, preaching, or withdrawal from the world: They mistakenly draw this image from a past period in the Church’s history.

On the other hand, some priests and religious today conceive of holiness in terms of social or political action; they end up competing with laypeople. How chaotic!

23. The world is not being renewed because people continue to conceive of holiness as something other than carrying out the duties of their state in life.

24. The workman will become a saint in the workplace, the soldier will become a saint in the army, the patient will become a saint in the hospital, the student will become a saint through his studies, the farmer will become a saint on the farm, the politician will become a saint in government office, and the priest will become a saint by faithfully fulfilling his priestly ministry. Every step of progress along the road to sanctity is a step of sacrifice in the performance of one’s duty.

25. Saints do not become saints through acts of prophecy or performance of miracles. They do nothing extraordinary at all, other than faithfully carrying out their ordinary duties.

26. The duty of the present moment, however, is not to be regarded as something passive. Rather, it is a constant and unceasing self-renewal, decision to choose or reject the Lord, search for the kingdom of God, belief in the infinite love of God, ardent action from the heart, reflection of the love of God in love of others—all in the present