Martyr 71 of 117 · Priest
Saint Joseph Đặng Đình Viên
Stepping out of the sugarcane field
1758 – 1838 · Feast day August 21
Priest, from Tiên Chu, Tiên Lữ district, Hưng Yên province · Vietnamese
Father Viên was hiding in a sugarcane field. Outside, soldiers were tormenting a child of the household to make him tell where the priest was. The child’s screams carried into the field. The priest could not stay hidden any longer. He parted the cane leaves and stepped out.
An orphan boy of Tiên Chu
Joseph Đặng Đình Viên, also called Lương, was born in Tiên Chu, Tiên Lữ district, Hưng Yên province. Sources disagree on the year of his birth, some giving 1758, others 1785.
He lost both parents as a small child. Kind people helped him and got him into the seminary. A child with no one to turn to was taken in and raised by the Church, and he grew up to serve it. In 1821 he was ordained a priest.
He served at Lục Thủy and then in many Catholic communities in Hưng Yên province. The orphan had become a father to a great many families.
Confiscated letters
In 1838, under Emperor Minh Mạng, the persecution spread. The mandarins seized letters Father Viên had sent to the bishops and missionaries, and the manhunt widened. Now they knew a priest named Viên was at work in the area.
August 1, 1838
On August 1, soldiers surrounded the place where he was staying in the village of Cầu Chay. He managed to slip out and hide in the sugarcane field behind the house.
When they could not find him, the soldiers turned on a child of the household, tormenting him to make him say where the priest was hiding.
He heard everything. Perhaps he remembered himself as a boy, an orphan with no one to protect him. Now another child was suffering because of him, and he could not let it go on.
He stepped out of the sugarcane field and gave himself up.
“Then who would follow the faith?”
The mandarin demanded that he step on the cross. He answered:
“If I, a priest, step on the cross, then who will follow the faith any more!”
He knew where he stood. A priest does not live for himself alone; everything he does is an example to many of the faithful. If the shepherd runs away, whom will the flock follow?
Forgiveness before death
Before his execution he forgave those who had informed on him, without bitterness or reproach. He had not wanted a child to suffer because of him, and he did not want to hold anger against anyone, even those who had brought him to his death.
On August 21, 1838, Father Joseph Viên was beheaded. The faithful took his body to be buried at Tiên Chu, his home village.
He was beatified on May 27, 1900, and canonized on June 19, 1988. His own feast day is August 21.
A child’s cry
Some of the biggest decisions in life are made in a moment. For Father Viên it was the moment he heard a child cry. He could have stayed still in the sugarcane and perhaps escaped. He chose to step out.
Jesus said: “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” Father Viên learned what those words meant not from books but from a child crying outside a sugarcane field.
Biography on the website of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Vietnam ↗