Saint Agnes Lê Thị Thành

Her rough black tunic hung in tatters, stuck to her skin with the blood that had flowed from the brutal floggings of the mandarin’s soldiers. When her youngest daughter, Lucia Nụ, came to visit and saw the torn welts on her old mother’s body, she burst into sobs. But the mother gathered her strength, held her daughter’s hand tightly and comforted her with a gentle smile:

“Don’t cry, my child! Look: these marks of blood are no disgrace; they are fresh red roses that Jesus has given me... I suffer these pains out of love for God; go home and thank God, and pray that I may persevere to the end!”

That woman with a mother’s heart was Saint Agnes Lê Thị Thành, fondly known as Saint Đê, the only woman among the one hundred seventeen Vietnamese Martyrs canonized by the Church. She was not a nun or a scholar; she was a simple country mother of six and a kindly grandmother to many little ones. By her heroic sacrifice and steadfast faith in prison, she showed the world how far a Vietnamese woman could go, through a mother’s love and her love of God, and she brought glory to her whole people.

As a girl, Thành was obedient, hardworking in the fields, modest and gentle, and known for her love of prayer; she went to church morning and evening. At nineteen (seventeen, according to some sources), at her parents’ wish, she married a devout young man of the village, Nguyễn Văn Nhất, whom the villagers called Mr. Đê, and so she too came to be called Mrs. Đê. Their marriage was a model of harmony and mutual respect. They had six children: two sons, named Đê and Trân, and four daughters, named Thu, Năm, Nhiên and Nụ.

Mrs. Đê was a wonderfully capable mother: she rose at dawn to cook and worked the fields alongside her husband. However hard the farm work, she always made time to teach her children their first prayers and hymns. Every evening after supper she gathered the children before the family altar to pray the Rosary. She often told them:

“Food and clothing are needs of this world, but keeping our souls free of sin and loving God is the eternal treasure of our family!”

Her heart was generous without limit: in her house there was always a separate jar of rice for wandering beggars. Whenever anyone in the village was sick or in trouble, she went of her own accord to visit, spoon-feed them rice porridge, wash their clothes and help with medicine. Two of her daughters later gave their lives to God in the Congregation of the Lovers of the Holy Cross, the natural fruit of the faith she had sown for so many years in that small house.

The soldiers burst into Mrs. Đê’s house and searched everywhere. Thanks to her calm, two missionary priests managed to escape into the marshes. But after hours of digging, the soldiers found the secret cellar and caught Father John the Baptist Thành hiding there. They tied him up, smashed the furniture, and arrested and bound Mrs. Đê and her husband.

The soldiers shoved the sixty-year-old mother about, tied her arms behind her back, put a heavy iron chain around her neck and marched her with the priests to the provincial prison of Nam Định, and later to Ninh Bình. On the way they beat her and mocked her as a “foolish old woman,” but Mrs. Đê walked on in silence, whispering the Hail Mary over and over.

Enraged by her steadfastness, the judge had her outer garment stripped off, had her tied to a post, and ordered four soldiers to lash her again and again with thorny rattan whips. The blows tore her flesh, and her blood soaked the earthen floor of the courtroom. But the sixty-year-old mother clenched her teeth and endured it without a single cry for mercy, only softly calling on the holy names:

“Jesus... Mother Mary... help me!”

When the lash could not break her, the mandarins devised a scheme vicious enough to make anyone shudder. Knowing how women dread venomous snakes, they had soldiers catch two live poisonous snakes, rolled up the legs of Mrs. Đê’s trousers, pushed the snakes inside and tied the hems shut. Then they stood around laughing, waiting for the woman to panic, leap about screaming, and trample on the cross to escape.

Yet her soul was filled with a strange joy. Whenever her children or other Christians slipped in to visit, she urged them to hold fast to the faith, to live in love and harmony, and to obey their superiors wholeheartedly. One morning in early July 1841, sensing that the hour had come to go home to the Father, she asked her fellow prisoners to help her sit up, and she prayed the Rosary one last time.

She has gone down in history as the only mother among the canonized martyrs of Vietnam. The Church celebrates her on July 12 each year, and on the common feast of November 24. In Vietnam, millions of mothers and grandmothers in the Catholic Mothers’ Associations take Saint Agnes Lê Thị Thành as their model and patroness.