Saint Peter Nguyễn Văn Tự

Peter Nguyễn Văn Tự was born in 1796 in the village of Ninh Cường, Nam Định province. As a small boy he lived at the presbytery, and then entered the seminary. At about thirty he was ordained a priest. In 1827 he made his vows as a Dominican.

For more than ten years after that, he served many Catholic communities. His years as a priest were the years when the persecution under Emperor Minh Mạng grew fiercer and fiercer.

In 1838 he was at Kẻ Mốt, a Catholic village where the mandarins suspected a priest was hiding. Soldiers came, surrounded the village, searched it, and found things used for Mass. They put pressure on the villagers.

On June 29, 1838, Father Tự was arrested together with the catechist Dominic Bùi Văn Úy.

The arrest did not fall on him alone. The whole village of Kẻ Mốt had to pay to keep from being destroyed. Some, afraid, abandoned the faith. Perhaps that was his greatest pain: not the chains on his body, but seeing his flock scattered.

Someone offered to pay a ransom for him. But the faithful had already had to pay to keep the village from being destroyed. He did not want them to bear any more. He refused.

And he said:

“Being arrested for the holy faith is a grace God gives.”

People usually regard arrest as a disaster. Father Tự saw it as a gift. Not because he loved suffering, but because he believed that to suffer for God is to share in God’s own lot.

In the courtroom, the mandarin asked about the confiscated Mass items: the chalice, the vestments, the prayer books. He calmly explained the meaning of each one. Perhaps that was the last catechism lesson he gave, and this time the listeners were the mandarins.

Many times the mandarin laid the cross before him, promising to release him if he stepped over it. He refused.

In the prison of Bắc Ninh he met the healer Joseph Hoàng Lương Cảnh, a seventy-five-year-old man also arrested for the faith. While waiting for his sentence, he asked another priest to come and give him the sacraments so that he could prepare himself.

On September 5, 1838, Father Peter Tự was beheaded at the Cổ Mễ execution ground, on the same day as the healer Cảnh.

His body was later taken to Nghĩa Vụ. Today his remains are kept at Trung Lai.

He was beatified on May 27, 1900, and canonized on June 19, 1988. His own feast day is September 5.

Father Tự teaches us another way of looking at the trials of life. There are times when we are misunderstood or lose out because we live by our faith. We can complain. Or we can, like Father Tự, see it as a chance to walk closer to God.

And he teaches one more thing: even in captivity, he thought of other people’s burdens before his own.