Martyr 72 of 117 · Layperson
Saint Joseph Hoàng Lương Cảnh
The old healer’s last house call
1763 – 1838 · Feast day September 5
Parish elder and herbal doctor, from Ván (or Ngàn Ván), Bắc Giang province · Vietnamese
Someone came to ask the healer Cảnh to treat a sick person. He was seventy-five, and had been denounced. But in all his life he had never refused such a call. He picked up his medicine chest and set out. And at the Thổ Hà ferry landing, soldiers were waiting.
Healer of the poor
Joseph Hoàng Lương Cảnh was born in 1763 in the village of Ván, also called Ngàn Ván, in today’s Bắc Ninh and Bắc Giang area, and lived in Thổ Hà. He practiced medicine.
People remember him as a devoted healer. Whoever fell ill and called, he came. For the poor, he usually treated them free of charge. He had a family, was a parish elder, and joined the Dominican Third Order.
His work as a healer and his faith met in one special way. In those days, a great many infants died. As a healer, he was often present beside dying children. And he baptized a great many of them at the hour of death. No one could count how many little souls the healer Cảnh brought home to God.
Denounced
A man in the area was jealous of him. That man went to the mandarin and accused Cảnh of hiding religious objects and sheltering priests.
Then someone came to ask him to treat a sick person. He went as always. At the Thổ Hà ferry landing, soldiers rushed in and arrested him.
Kneeling instead of stepping over
He was taken to the prison of Bắc Ninh. There he met Father Peter Nguyễn Văn Tự, the catechist Dominic Bùi Văn Úy, and many others arrested for the faith.
The mandarin laid a cross before the prisoners and ordered each in turn to step over it. When Cảnh’s turn came, the seventy-five-year-old knelt down and bowed his head to kiss the cross.
The mandarin threatened to beat him, threatened to kill him. He answered:
“Even if I must suffer a hundred thousand pains from the rod, or must die, I am willing to endure it.”
At that age, every interrogation, every transfer back and forth was a torment. But he did not change his mind.
Cổ Mễ, September 5
On September 5, 1838, under Emperor Minh Mạng, the healer Joseph Cảnh was beheaded at the Cổ Mễ execution ground, on the same day as Father Peter Tự.
His body was first buried near the place of execution. Then the Catholics of Thổ Hà found a way to bring him home. Today his remains are venerated at Hương La.
He was beatified on May 27, 1900, and canonized on June 19, 1988. His own feast day is September 5.
The last call
His last house call led him to prison. But in truth, it was the calls before it that made him who he was: all the times he went to the bedside of the poor without taking a coin, all the times he baptized a child about to leave this world.
The healer Cảnh never refused a call. And when God called him home, he did not refuse either.
Biography on the website of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Vietnam ↗