Cardinal Nguyen Van Thuan Foundation

Excerpt from Prologue...
I knew Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan from the time he was eighteen. Our grandfathers had worked together on the construction of a church and our families have remained friendly since then. Later, Thuan and I attended seminary at An Ninh during the same years, although Thuan was four years my senior.

His life story is fascinating, yet the dramatic and often tragic events that fashioned him were dwarfed by the magnificent spirituality they fostered within him. And those who might feel tempted to see his life as a succession of dramatic moments apart from his faith in God miss the essential point. The dramas and tragedies that wove the rich fabric of his life definitely affected him in one way or another, but Thuan became the man of God he was because of and despite of them.

To write about Thuan is no easy task, and the main difficulty lies in understanding his spirituality in order to convey it effectively. To my knowledge, few biographers attempt to write about a person's spirituality, for even the most naive realize that such an undertaking is as daunting as the literary critic who tries to exhaust the beauty of a poem; a theologian who tries to describe faith; a Buddhist thinker who endeavors to express his or her vision of Nirvana. They would be better off trying to empty the ocean with their cupped hands. This is because spirituality is something experienced, not described. And yet, writing about Thuan without touching upon his spirituality would be to tell a meaningless story, it would be as if one took God out of his life—an impossibility.

Some years ago, after I completed a biography of his mother, Thuan asked me to write about his life and spirituality. For the longest time, I tried to exempt myself, invoking various reasons and excuses on different occasions. Perhaps I was unconsciously afraid of my inability to adequately describe his spirituality. But in the summer of 1999, as we sat on a beach near Rome, Thuan and I spoke far into the night about his life and his thoughts. He asked me again to consider writing his biography. Although it took a long time before I had the courage to accept the task, I have finally written here of Thuan and his spiritual journey. I hope that those who read this book will learn as much from it as I have from writing it.

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