Saint Matthew Nguyễn Văn Phượng (Đắc)

Matthew Nguyễn Văn Phượng, also called Đắc, was born in the village of Kẻ Lái, Lý Nhơn, Quảng Bình province, at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Some documents give the year 1801, others 1808.

He lost his parents early. The orphan boy learned traditional herbal medicine and was later taken on as a helper by Father Nguyễn Thời Điểm. Perhaps those years taught him both of his callings: healing bodies and caring for souls.

He married Vốn, settled in the community of Sáo Bùn, and had eight children. Eight children, one house, one medicine chest: he supported them all with his healing. The community trusted him and made him their parish elder. Besides treating the sick, he visited the dying, helped them prepare to go in peace, and taught the catechism to the children.

Men like Phượng held the Catholic villages together in those days. Priests were few, and they had to hide. It was the parish elders, the healers and the fathers of families who kept the faith alive.

Early in 1861, when Emperor Tự Đức’s ban on the faith was at its harshest, Father John Đoạn Trinh Hoan, a priest past sixty, came to stay at Phượng’s house to give the sacraments to the faithful of the area.

Someone found out and informed the mandarin for a reward. Soldiers came and surrounded the house.

They asked Phượng where the priest was hiding. He would not say. The soldiers searched and found prayer books and Mass vestments. He was given forty strokes of the rod right there in his own house, and his youngest son was given eighty.

Picture that father, his back bleeding, made to watch his son beaten twice as hard, knowing that one word or one pointed finger could make it stop. He still said nothing.

In the end Father Hoan was caught as well. Phượng and the priest were taken together to Đồng Hới.

He was held in the prison of Đồng Hới for more than four months. Four times he was brought out for questioning and given thirty strokes. Each time they pressed him to step on the cross, and each time he refused.

Once the court clerk let it be known that he wanted to marry Phượng’s daughter. Phượng answered with all the bluntness of a parish elder:

“I will not give her to you, unless you yourself become a Catholic! As for having to die for the faith, I am ready.”

He was a gentle healer, but when it came to the faith he would not give an inch.

On May 26, 1861, Phượng was led to the execution ground at the Citadel Gate of Quảng Bình. That same day Father John Đoạn Trinh Hoan, the priest he had sheltered, was also beheaded. Host and guest went the whole way together.

He was buried in the community of Mỹ Hương. His remains were later kept at the Carmelite monastery in the Archdiocese of Huế.

He was beatified on May 2, 1909, and canonized on June 19, 1988. His own feast day is May 26.

Matthew Phượng never preached from a pulpit or wrote a book. All he had was a house, and he opened its door when the community needed it. He knew what it would cost him, and he opened it anyway.

Any Catholic family today can be a house like that, where the sick are visited, the grieving are comforted, and God is welcome.