Saint Dominic Nguyễn Văn Huyên

Dominic Nguyễn Văn Huyên was born in 1817 in the Catholic community of Đông Thành, Thái Bình province. His father was Nguyễn Thiên, his mother Nguyễn Duyên. The family lived by fishing on the Nhị Bình river, near the Ba Lạt estuary.

Huyên’s childhood was the sound of oars splashing in the half-light of dawn, the smell of fresh fish and of nets drying, afternoons spent mending nets with his father. When he grew up, he carried on his parents’ trade. A whole life bound to a boat, a net and the rising and falling tide.

In Catholic fishing villages like Đông Thành, faith and work went naturally together. People prayed before going out on the water and gave thanks when the boats came home. A fisherman understands better than anyone what it means to put his life in God’s hands.

In June 1861, Emperor Tự Đức issued an edict to “disperse” the Catholics. Catholics were forced to leave their villages and were sent to non-Christian villages, kept under watch, their property confiscated. The aim was to break the communities into pieces, so that faith would have nothing to lean on.

Huyên was arrested, taken to the district court of Quỳnh Côi, and then held in the prison of Tăng Già for nine months.

Nine months of hunger and thirst. Nine months of torture. Nine months away from the river, from the village, from his loved ones. Again and again the mandarin offered the same terms: step over the cross and you can go home. Each time Huyên shook his head.

In prison, Huyên was not alone. There were others from the same parish and the same village, sharing the same fate, among them Dominic Trần Văn Toại, an older fisherman from Đông Thành. They prayed together and encouraged one another through the long nights.

Some words of Scripture become a lifeline for a prisoner. For Huyên, it was the words of Jesus:

“Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father.” (Mt 10:32)

An ordinary fisherman, in a dark prison, lived that word of God to the full.

In the end, the mandarin sentenced him to be burned. On the morning of June 5, 1862, Huyên was taken to the execution ground of Nam Định. Once more they ordered him to trample on the cross. He refused, and calmly stepped into the bamboo cage.

The flames rose. That same day his fellow villager Toại died the same way.

When the fire died down, his relatives were given his body and took it to be buried at the church of the Đông Thành community.

He was beatified on April 29, 1951, and canonized on June 19, 1988. His own feast day is June 5.

The edict of dispersal wanted to separate Catholics from one another, from their villages, from their churches. But Huyên’s story ends the opposite way. The villagers brought him home. He lies beside the church of Đông Thành, beside the river of his life.

People can force others to leave the place they belong to. But no one can separate a person from the community they have loved with their whole life.