Saint José Fernández (Hiền)

José Fernández was born in 1775 in the region of Ávila, Spain, the homeland of Saint Teresa. As a young man he joined the Dominican Order, was ordained a priest and asked to be sent to the missions of the Province of the Holy Rosary.

In 1806 he landed at Cửa Hàn, today’s Đà Nẵng. He learned Vietnamese and took the name Hiền, which means gentle. It suited him well.

He began by working among people who did not yet know God, then served at Kiên Lao and in the seminaries. For many years he taught and guided young men who would become priests and catechists, the ones who would stay on to care for the faithful when the missionaries were gone.

He understood that mission is more than preaching trips. It also means building a local Church, where Vietnamese sons care for their own people.

For thirty-two years he worked quietly like this in the North, and he became one of the leaders of the Dominican missionaries there.

At the end of 1837 the manhunt under Emperor Minh Mạng was growing fiercer, and just then Father Hiền fell gravely ill. He needed shelter, but the people of Quần Liêu, afraid of being punished, did not dare take in a foreign priest.

Then Father Peter Nguyễn Bá Tuần, a Vietnamese priest already seventy-two, came and stayed with him so that the villagers would feel safe helping. The two old priests fled together into the marshes of Kim Sơn, and together they were handed over to the mandarin.

The mandarin knew Father Hiền spoke fluent Vietnamese as well as foreign languages. He promised to free him, and even make him a court interpreter, if he gave up his faith and stepped on the cross.

He answered:

“I did not come here to serve the kings of this world, but only to preach the religion of God.”

Thirty-two years earlier he had left his homeland, his family, everything, not to become an official in a foreign country but only to bring the Gospel to these people.

Nor did he give up any names. After thirty-two years in the North he knew so many names and places that one word from him could have harmed hundreds of people. He kept silent.

Father Tuần, the friend who had come to care for him, died in prison. Nine days later, on July 24, 1838, Father José Fernández (Hiền) was beheaded in Nam Định. He was sixty-three.

He was beatified in 1900 and canonized on June 19, 1988. His own feast day is July 24.

Father Hiền: he was given that name in his first days in Vietnam, and for thirty-two years he lived up to it, gentle, patient, quietly building.

Many people can be bought with titles. But someone who has given up everything for God will not trade it for any post.