When
thinking of writing the spiritual journey of my family, I recall a question
that professor Gilberto Cavazos-González asked our class a few years ago, “who
traditioned you and how?” About 90% of the class answered “the family”. It was short to answer “who”, but to answer
“how”, each of us had a whole different story to tell. For me, this question
includes the whole spiritual journey of my family, which identifies me as a
Catholic, and a missionary. Therefore, I want to go back to the background of
my family to see where they lived their spiritual life, and discover more how
they lived it as a non-Christian family, and then as a Catholic family. Finally,
it‘s important for me to know who had the greatest influence that could form my
family tradition, and especially my Christian spiritual life as today.
The
Background of My Family
My
ancestors originated from China. However, they had to leave China to explore a
new land in Vietnam because of the social reality at that time, which was a
chaos of fighting and killing among tribes in China in order to look for the
strongest tribe to govern over the other.
Also, a big group of Chinese immigrated to Vietnam by boat. With a
Confucian background, they practiced to live out the ethics of filial piety as the
foundation of the virtuous life.[1] They experienced that wars
and politics terribly separated their families, and destroyed trust among their
relatives. Therefore, they tried to avoid wars and politics to look for peace
and harmony to rebuild their family bond for the next generations. When
arriving in Vietnam, together with the Chinese population, they continued to be
the faithful of Confucianism. However, in encountering Vietnamese culture, in
which Taoism and Buddhism had already been strong there, they found many
similarities with their own belief. Those living tried to adapt the Vietnamese
culture and religions. In the second generation in Vietnam, they began to have
mixed marriages with the Vietnamese. Later on, they actually did not practice
Confucianism clearly any more, neither Buddhism nor Taoism. It was a mixed
religion combining Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, which people called folk
religion. What my Grandfather told me
was that worshiping our ancestors was the focus of our belief. Our religion was
the religion of the majority; and our spiritual life was mixed and integrated
into the Vietnamese culture until people couldn’t call us Chinese any more.
Before Becoming a
Christian Family
Living in a small
village, where most of the people there were our family members, relatives, and
close neighbors, there was not much of an education, or outside influences on
the family life. In other words, family structure and authority mainly decided how
people should live and practice their spiritual life. Indeed, men were dominant
in leading the spiritual direction to the whole family. They responsibly had to
observe, learn, practice, and do all kinds of rituals and traditions of the
family as they grew up. Women and children just were participants, obedient,
and following exactly what their husbands and fathers asked them to do. They
never set their tones in worshipping the ancestors or giving any comment or
suggestion on how to do this. The male dominant culture set all the rules and
customs for this task, so that women did not need to care about this, or never
asked questions concerning about these traditions. One thing they must know was
that spiritual direction was not their job at all in the family.
Another reason that
explained why women could not be the spiritual leaders was that women had to
deal with menstruation, which was considered as dirty, not holy, not deserved
to stand in front of the ancestor’s altar to pray. Most of women felt
embarrassed when this happened to them. They
were not encouraged to come to the spiritual gatherings in the family or in the
public. Women totally relied on the directions that men were obligated to lead
them. Therefore, when asked about the traditions or spiritual rituals of the
family, most of the women did not confidently know how to lead them, or did not
accurately acknowledge what to explain to others. This is exactly what David G.
Benner said in his article, Nurturing
Spiritual Growth, when talking about “spiritual direction” that, “Clearly
the concept of direction has been troublesome for some people and traditions.
Often this is based on the overtones of authority that are associated with the
word ‘direction’.”[2]
Indeed, in the culture of my family at that time, women spiritually lived in
the so-called “blind obedience”, and were completely dependent on the authority
of men to direct them. This way of life had been carried out in my family for
generations, even though in some unfortunate cases when the wives lost their
husbands, and had no son to continue taking care of the altar of their ancestors,
they were so confused, losing the spiritual direction; they had to invite an
elderly relative to worship the ancestors for them once in awhile. My
Grandfather said that, these women were so unfortunate, because they had to
stay single to show their faithfulness to their deceased husbands. They felt
guilty for not complying with their duty to keep the altar warm and fruitful
sometimes. Generally speaking, our spiritual life was evaluated on how we
worshiped our ancestors. In other words, our “cotidiano” was to mainly focus
on, and remember our ancestors. For example, when we promised something, we
asked our ancestors to be witnesses. Before we ate, we offered a bowl of
everything on the altar for our ancestors to eat first.
Talking directly to our
ancestors on the altar about our needs was the way we prayed in my family
tradition. There were two ways that we placed our ancestors’ images on the
altar. With a Chinese background, especially to worship the first ancestors
coming from China, we used pieces of wood to write the names of our ancestors in
Chinese characters on them. Later on, when adapting the Vietnamese culture, we
used the paintings of our ancestors with their names written underneath in
Vietnamese characters. Then, with the technology of the camera, we used
pictures of the deceased. In the lecture, Who Assists Our
Spiritual Life, on October 11, 2010, professor Gilberto presented the topic of
praying with icons and images, which are so important in many cultures.[3] In this understanding, these
images helped us stay focus on whom we prayed to. This also helped us contact
with our emotion and our own needs when praying. By looking into these images,
we could easily lift up our heart toward our ancestors. Without these pieces of
wood and pictures, my Grandfather could not pray to our ancestors. He looked
slowly, and carefully at the images, using the list of all the names to call aloud
our ancestors, to invite them to come back to eat with us at this moment, and
then he presented all our needs to them. For us, our ancestors were our
“saints” or our protectors. Therefore, my Grandfather talked (prayed) directly
to them like he saw them face to face. Actually, we believed that our ancestors
were invisibly present at this moment to listen to our needs. In the same
lecture, when talking about “Praying to the Saints”, Gilberto used the idea
that, “It is prayer, because they are not visibly present.”[4] Again, we believed that our ancestors could
watch over us, keep us from harm, and bring us good luck, prosperity, and
happiness in life.
In addition to praying
to the ancestors at home, we also went to the ancestors’ temple, which was
built in the center of the village for the whole family descendents. During the
first day of Lunar New Year, the whole village (my family members and
relatives) gathered together in the temple to precede the ceremony of
worshipping our ancestors. In this ceremony, the role of the elders in the
family was very important in leading the people to partake, and follow the
rituals step by step. They wore traditional clothes, chanting in loud voice,
and playing drums and gongs to make this day a remarkable day. The purpose was
to thank our ancestors for watching over us, and to show the strength of our
descendents that we were blessed to have many children to continue our
traditions. In this way, we tried to
teach our young generation how to worship our ancestors, and pass on our family
traditions to the next generations.
One of the most
influential members in my family at that time was my Great Grandfather, who
learned to become a very famous sorcerer, practicing sorcery, and having power
to talk directly to the dead, and to drive away the evil spirit for those who
were possessed. To have such power, he had to fast from food, drink, and sex “to
grow in holiness and virtue.”[5] He became purified to be able to connect with
the souls of the dead, especially the ancestors. People invited him to come to
their house to talk directly to the deceased to see what else the dead wanted
the family to fulfill from now on to earn prosperity, and happiness for their
children. “Do good and avoid evil” was his moral principle of practicing
sorcery, and the foundation of his spiritual growth as well. He had a great
influence on morality, and spirituality for the whole village. Before he died,
he passed on this power to my Grandfather to continue his job as a sorcerer.
Moreover, we practiced
Feng-shui, which was understood as the wisdom of our ancestors, as part of our
spiritual life. We had to learn how to arrange the furniture inside the house
to create a suitable space for the good spirit to dwell. When building a house,
we paid attention to all directions of the location, and to decide where to
open the windows or the doors to create a good direction for the spirit to
come. Again, the spirit was something
invisible, and supernatural that could bring us success, prosperity, and the
fullness of life. When talking about spirit, in his book, Beyond Piety, said Gilberto, “Spirit is very much a part of who we
are as humans.”[6]
We knew nothing about “ruah”, God, or the Holy Spirit, but in some ways, we
were connected with the spirit as supernatural power. When reflecting on this,
the so-called spirit became a sign for us to become Catholics when the
religious conversion happened.
The Path to Conversion
I
was told that one brother of my Great Grandfather escaped from Vietnam to
Thailand during the time of the French colony. He was adopted, and raised by a
Catholic Thai family. He became a Catholic. Later on, he married the daughter
of this family, and had three children. Two of his children became priests of
the Redemptorists in Thailand. They wondered about the root of their father’s
side. In 1950 they went back to Vietnam to look for their relatives. They found
the village, where my family was living, and people there also recognized them
as our relatives. During their stay in Vietnam, they talked about Catholicism
to all my family members and relatives in the village although their Vietnamese
speaking was poor at that time.
After
they went back to Thailand, my Grandfather was struck by their talks and faith.
He gave up practicing sorcery, and donated all his tools for this job to a
Museum in France. He did not eat for nine days and nine nights. He slept on the
ground. He did “the discipline” by carrying a heavy bag of stones on his back
uphill and downhill every morning of these days. He was doing something that
could be called as “asceticism”, which was said by Gilberto as “the exercise
needs to prepare oneself to run the race of salvation in Christ.” [7] He
really wanted to purify his heart and body to become truly a Christian. He
thought of God instead of thinking of only his ancestors. He was doing a great
sacrifice for changing of his heart instead of doing sorcery, his daily
activity. This relates to conversion that Gilberto meant “a changing in a
person’s way of thinking”[8].
In other words, Gilberto continued with the idea of Keith Douglass Warner about
conversion as “a conscious process of changing one’s behavior, world view, or
self understanding.”[9] Indeed, my Grandfather was so consistent in
listening to his heart toward a radical conversion really thirsty “for deep
personal engagement and transforming surrender to the Divine”[10] ,
which led him to a big decision in his life. On the tenth day, he decided to go
to a Catholic church five kilometers away to ask in becoming a Catholic. He was allowed to study some basic catechism and
was officially baptized. As a famous sorcerer, the leader of the village, once
he became a Catholic, the whole village, especially my relatives at that time, also
converted to be faithful Catholics. My father became a Catholic when he was
fifteen years old. This was so true when Brian Hall pointed out the role of the
leader in his article, Leadership
Development and Spiritual Growth, that, “The leader is the focal point of
both the values of individuals and the community. It is critical therefore that
the leadership be well integrated spiritually, and that its values be
conductive to growth not only for the leader but also for the whole
congregation or community.”[11]
A
New Life – Some Spiritual Fruits
Reflecting
on the religious conversion story of my family, I would like to appreciate the
seed of faith from my Grandfather. This seed has been handed on to four
generations now, and growing fruitfully in my family. In the gospel of Luke, It
says that, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this
mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you”.
This faith uprooted my whole family from the so-called folk religion and
planted it in the sea of Catholicism. Without
the heartedly spiritual conversion of my Grandfather, we would not have been faithful
Catholics today. This conversion really led my family members to live a very
discipline Christian life.
We
had to get up at 3:00AM to take a 4 kilometer-walk to church to attend the Mass
at 4:30AM in the morning. We had been following up with my Grandfather in practice
this way for many years. In this stage of our Christian life, we tried to make
a close relationship with God by going to church to practice our faith as often
as we could. My Grandfather used to say that, “you better stay in the house of
the Lord.” (He meant church). According to Carl Arico, we were being in the
stage, which was called “three simple but profound concepts: the spirituality
of dwelling, the spirituality of seeking, and the spirituality of practicing.”[12]
After
1975, we were persecuted by the communists, and hardly went to church for
political reasons. Therefore, we had to pray at home in front of the altar of
God. One of the biggest changes after we became Catholics was that we made the
altar of God above the altar of our ancestors. On the altar, we placed the
crucifix in the middle, Saint Mary and Joseph at the both sides, two candles,
and a Holy Bible. Underneath the altar of God, we placed the altar of the
ancestors with all their images. We
prayed to God, and to Saints, but we did not pray to our ancestors any more.
This was a great change. Instead of praying to our ancestors, we prayed to God
for them, who were still in limbo, and we asked those who were already in
Heaven to intercede for us. Actually, we prayed to Saint Mary the most by saying
the Rosary. Also, it was important that, we prayed to the Saints. This way of
devotion was rooted in our culture of praying directly to our ancestors. Although
knowing that we should ask all the Saints to intercede for us, we still prayed
to the Saints as a prolonged tradition of our culture. We believed that Saint Mary could liberate us
from persecution and keep us from danger. Especially, during this time under
the oppression of the communists, we prayed hard to Our Lady of Lavang, who
appeared to comfort the Catholic refugees in the forest under the persecution
of anti-Christians, and tell them to boil leaves from the trees to cure their
sickness. The image of Mary was
unforgettable in our mind and heart at that time. Thomas P. Rausch, in his
article, The Catholic Imagination,
reminded us that, “With the rich Marian devotion that has shaped the Catholic
Imagination since the earliest days of the Church, it is not surprising that
there is a long tradition of apparitions, both official and popular.”[13] Regarding praying the Rosary, I can’t forget a
remarkable time when I was sent to live with my Grandparents to entertain them in
their old age. Whenever we heard the noise in the kitchen in the night time, my
Grandfather woke us up to pray the Rosary for one hour. He explained to me that
since he gave up practicing sorcery, the ghosts from outside kept following him
very much to bother him. They got into our kitchen, using our pots and pans to
make noise. Therefore, we had to wake up to pray the Rosary, asking Mary to
drive the evil spirit away and keep us safe.
Growing
up with these very strong family devotions to Mary, together with another
family tradition of retelling of the great stories of the Portuguese and French
Missionaries, who came to make our people Catholics, I came to recognize that
these are the seeds of my religious vocation. I remember when I was 6 – 12
years old, at meals, I was often told of a very influential French Missionary,
Fr. Alexander de Rhodes, who converted the Vietnamese to Catholicism, taught us
how to work effectively in the fields, and invented our language. The first impression about him was his
reputation of being a priest; another outstanding trait was his background of
being a foreigner. Even though these two characteristics made him a missionary,
I still did not understand what missionary meant. The story wasn’t a big deal
at the time in my childhood, but it has really been a returning echo during my
growing up time until now. I recognize this as a sign of my vocation when the
calling has a chance to come, I positively say yes to it.
Along
with the great story of this French Missionary, I was also told of my family’s
religious conversion, and the story of my relatives, who escaped to Thailand
three generations ago, and became Redemptorist Missionaries. My dad seemed very
proud of these unseen priests in our family record. He kept telling us this
story, and wished that as if one of his seven children would become a priest.
At that time, I did not really pay attention at all to what he said to us.
However, when reflecting on my vocation, his wish is also a reminder that
encourages me to become a future missionary.
In
telling the spiritual journey of my family, I really earn a chance to learn a
lot about my family’s background, particularly of how they lived their
spiritual life before and after becoming a Catholic family. I am so grateful
for the lives of my ancestors, especially my Great Grandfather and Grandfather,
who had such powerful influences on my family tradition. They really lit up in
our hearts a strong desire to first live out the spirit of filial piety, and
then to live as faithful Christians. In addition, I am also thankful to those
for giving me ideas, thoughts, and encouragement to look back at the root of my
spiritual life, which I never had the opportunity to deepen. Finally, I thank
my mother, uncle, and several of my brothers for affirming these ancestral
traditions and practices provided are trustworthy.
Bibliography
1. Phan,
Peter C. "The Christ of Asia."
studia missionalia vol. 45 (1996) 22 - 55
2. Benner,
David G. “Nurturing spiritual growth,” Journal of Psychology &
Theology 30, no. 4
(December 1, 2002) 355 - 360
3. Cavazos-González,
Gilberto, The lecture, “Who Assists Our Spiritual Life”,
on Oct. 11, 2010
No pages. Online: http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2005/murphy_denyhimself1_feb05.asp
5. Cavazos-González,
Gilberto. Beyond Piety: The Christian Spiritual Life,
Justice,
and Liberation (Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2010)
6. Hall,
Brian. “Leadership development and spiritual growth”, Anglican
Theological Review
9 (June 1, 1984) 100 - 120
7. Arico,
Carl. “The Ongoing Spiritual Journey”, Honeygosky. [Ed.] Religion
82 - 88
8. Rausch,
Thomas P. “The Catholic Imagination”, Being Catholic in a
Culture of Choice. (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical
Press, 2006) 20- 35
[1] Peter C. Phan, "The Christ
of Asia." studia missionalia
vol. 45 (1996), 37
[2] David
G. Benner, “Nurturing spiritual growth,” Journal of Psychology &
Theology 30, no. 4 (December 1, 2002) 356.
[3] Gilberto Cavazos-González, The
lecture, “Who Assists Our Spiritual Life”, on Oct. 11, 2010
[4] Cavazos-González, The lecture,
“Who Assists Our Spiritual Life”, on Oct. 11, 2010
[5] Austin G. Murphy, “Why the Christian must Deny Himself”, IgnatiusInsight. No
pages. Online: http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2005/murphy_denyhimself1_feb05.asp
[6] Gilberto
Cavazos-González, Beyond Piety: The Christian Spiritual Life, Justice, and
Liberation (Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2010), 4.
[9] Cavazos-González,
Beyond Piety, 86.
[11] Brian
Hall, “Leadership development and spiritual growth”, Anglican Theological
Review 9 (June 1, 1984) 102.
[12] Carl Arico, “The Ongoing
Spiritual Journey”, Honeygosky. [Ed.] Religion. 87
[13] Thomas P. Rausch, “The Catholic
Imagination”, Being Catholic in a Culture of Choice. (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical
Press, 2006) 21
