Vietnam, a land of Christendom and Mission.

                         As soon as I came back from my two months holidays in Belgium, I flew from Saigon to Hanoi (2 hours plane) with my confrere Father Trinh. The goal of our trip was to talk about missionary life in several parishes. We are welcome by two bishops whose diocese adjoin but whose pastoral situation is completely diferent.


The first diocese is big as twice Belgium (65.000 square kilometers) and the catholics represent three pourcent of the population. The catholics are widespread and the bisphop do not have the permission to send priest to establish new parishes. He can only visit his communities and celebrate masses but not on a regular basis. Despite the limitations, the christian communities are growing and the religious freedom is increasing. The bishop invites us to concelebrate the ordination mass of seven new priests. The cathedral is overcrowded and many people have to stay outside its walls. It is very joyfull. These new priests will go to work in several parishes where they will be alone and certainly have plenty of work to do...

The bishops welcame us really as a father does.
 

After saying goodbye to the bishop, we rent a car and make 150 km until the other bishop's house.


Beautiful rice fields along the road.


We reach, as a way to say, a completely diferent world. We have left a land of mission and we arrive in a land of christendom, in the original acceptation of this word. Here, everybody is christian and the people build churches as big as cathedrals!




This church was erected in a small village (!) only twenty years ago. It looks like a cathedral !

The seminaries and formation houses of the congregations are full. The parishes have thousands of parishioners.





Participation to the confirmation celebration. The church is full...as usual.

 We are invited to participate to the feast of Our Lady of Assumption. Although the church is huge, the mass has to be celebrated outside, due to the lack of space. 5000 people come to attend the mass. They organize a procession with the music of the fanfare (trumpets music). At the end of the mass, I am invited to say a few words. I speak in vietnamese, which always causes big surprise among the people, and in honour of Our Lady, I say a "Hail Mary" in my mother language (French).

Procession to celebrate the Assumption of Our Lady.
What do I remember most of this trip? Certainly the strong faith of this people and the warmly welcome of the christian communities. Maybe the secret of such strong faith is the courage of this people. In the North of Vietnam, it is hot and humid in the summertime and very cold and humid during the winter. People wake up at 4.30 am to go to mass. The day starts with this simple evidence: God turns Himself present in the Eucharist. That mystery enlightens the entire day in the village. And mass is only possible if they are priest to celebrate it and religious sisters and laypeople to organize it and to participate. Land of Mission or Christendom, those are the two aspects or the universal Church. We need to be encouraged by living christian communities and we have also to accept to reach a world who do is indiferent or reluctant to the Good News, we have to reach people who never heard of the Gospel to announce it to them.

Picture taken at the end of the mass.