Saint Peter Đinh Văn Dũng

Peter Đinh Văn Dũng was born in 1800 in the parish of Trung Đồng, Kẻ Mèn, Thái Bình province. He was a fisherman who made his living from the river, like so many others in the area.

People remembered him as a simple, fervent, gentle Catholic. He held no office and was not known beyond his village. His life turned around his boat, his family and his parish: out on the river in the morning, home in the evening, teaching his children and grandchildren to pray and keep the faith. A calm, quiet life, flowing along like the river.

Then came the year he turned sixty-two.

In the spring of 1862 the edict dispersing the Catholics reached Đông Phú. Dũng was arrested and sent away to the village of Ngọc Chí, and in April he was moved again, to Lương Mỹ in Quỳnh Côi district.

A heavy cangue hung around his neck and his feet were in chains. At sixty-two, shoulders worn out by years of rowing and hauling nets now had to carry a wooden yoke. Many times they brought him out for questioning and tried to force him to trample on the cross. He would not.

Seeing how firm he was, the mandarin tried something else. He had soldiers take him home for a visit, still in the cangue, still in chains, hoping that when the father saw his wife and children weeping and pleading, his heart would melt.

His wife and children did weep. How could they not, seeing him come home like that?

But Dũng did not change his mind. He looked at his wife and children and said:

“Do not weep, but rejoice, for I am being given the chance to offer my life for the name of Christ.”

Then he comforted each of them and went back to prison.

We do not know what else he said to his wife that afternoon, or which grandchild’s head he stroked. We only know it was the last time his family saw him. The visit home was really a farewell.

After two months in prison at Lương Mỹ, he was sentenced to be burned alive. On June 6, 1862, under Emperor Tự Đức, they shut him in a bamboo cage at the execution ground of Nam Định and set it alight.

He was first buried at the execution ground. Later the faithful brought him back to the churchyard at Đông Phú.

He was beatified on April 29, 1951, and canonized on June 19, 1988. His own feast day is June 6.

When we read about the martyrs, we usually see only the one who goes to the execution ground. Dũng’s story reminds us to look at those left behind too: a wife who lost her husband, children who lost their father. They had to go on living with the memory of that last meeting in chains.

But Dũng left them something too. Not tears, but a parting word: rejoice. A father facing death who still made sure to comfort his children: that is love to the very end.