Saint Joseph Phạm Trọng Tả

He was born in 1800 in Quần Cống, Trà Lũ commune, Xuân Trường prefecture, Nam Định province, in the same family as Judge Khảm and Luke Phạm Trọng Thìn.

As canton chief he dealt with taxes, registers and debts for a whole district. It was the kind of post where a man could easily grow rich and just as easily make others suffer. He chose honesty and an open hand.

He was also a member of the Dominican Lay Fraternity, and lived his faith in the thick of household and village affairs: not in a monastery, but in the debt ledger, in the way he treated his servants, in the small decisions of every day.

The family records tell more. His household had many workers, and before Tết he went to visit each of their homes. Whatever gift anyone gave him, he gave back twice as much. Farmers who owed him rice had their debt reduced. Those in great need had it cancelled entirely.

Picture Quần Cống in the days before Tết. Poor families lay awake wondering how to pay their debts and still get ready for the New Year. Then the master came, not to collect but to give. Many homes probably had a warmer Tết because of him.

When his wife worried that he was giving away too much, he answered with the saying his descendants never forgot: if we forget what others owe us, God forgets what we owe Him. That is the Our Father lived out in a canton chief’s ledger: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”

In 1858 French and Spanish forces attacked Đà Nẵng, and the persecution grew worse. Bishop Melchor García Sampedro, whose Vietnamese name was Xuyên, asked Tả and Thìn to go to the governor of Nam Định, plead for leniency toward the faithful, and assure him of their loyalty to the court.

They went in good faith. But just then a rebellion broke out in the region. The governor believed he had been deceived and ordered their arrest. Tả, Thìn, Judge Khảm and many people of Quần Cống were taken to the provincial capital.

The man who had come to ask for peace was taken for a liar. Perhaps that hurt Cai Tả more than the arrest itself: his goodwill had been misread.

He was nearly sixty when he was arrested. He spent about four months in prison, in the cangue and chains, and was beaten. But he was not alone: members of his household and people from his village were locked up with him. They prayed together and waited together.

On January 13, 1859, he was strangled at the Bảy Mẫu execution ground, together with Judge Khảm, Thìn and seven other Catholics. The villagers carried their bodies back to Quần Cống for burial.

He was beatified on April 29, 1951, and canonized on June 19, 1988. His own feast day is January 13.

Cai Tả’s holiness had been showing for years, right there in his household’s debt ledger. A man so used to forgiving the debts of the poor may not have found it so hard, at the end, to give up his own life too.

Next time we pray the Our Father, we might remember Cai Tả and ask ourselves: is there some debt in my life, some wrong done to me, that I need to “forget”?