Dear Parishioners,

I was very touched by the invitation to preach at the Mass celebrating Fr. Vang Tran’s forty years of Redemptorist priestly service. I have known Fr. Vang for many years as my Redemptorist confrere. Over the past four years as I have had the joy of living in community with him I would say that I now know him as my friend and brother. He is a man who has responded with a most generous heart to the love of God in his priestly vocation. No doubt because of his growing up in a large loving Catholic family with ten brothers and sisters, he is a very warm and loving man.

From his loving parents and large family, he became a man with a generous spirit that reaches out to all he meets. We Redemptorists joke that Fr. Vang knows the names of everybody in the parish, knows those of Annapolis who are not Catholics, knows all the workers in the stores and restaurants, and he even knows the names of everybody’s dogs and cats.

In the midst of the height of Covid, I had a nosebleed that would not stop. He came to my room, put on soft mystical music, invited me to enter into serenity and calm, gave me some kind of natural healing, and I was cured. I appointed him the doctor of our community, but when I mentioned to him that I had a toothache, he showed up in my room with pliers; I said I would prefer a dentist. What a good and loving man.

Fr. Vang’s life as a priest would make a wonderful movie and he could star in it since he is such a young looking priest with the beautiful black hair of a teenager. His priestly vocation as told by him began this way: “Encouraged by parents and inspired by my brother, I joined the Redemptorist seminary in Huế, in 1963, at the age of almost 12. The missionary spirit of the Redemptorists in our very challenging situation during the war time helped strengthen my vocation. During my four year probation we were sent out to live, study, and make our living during the four years of college, with retreat once a month; afterward, we are to make the decision to come back for the Novitiate if we are still eligible and willing.. I spent time working with refugees (two years) and street children/shoeshine boys. The Fall of Saigon in April 1975 I left the country with my seven siblings by helicopter on the last day. My parents and two sisters were supposed to join us on the next day, but they were one day too late. We were reunited with our parents ten years later, and another five years for our sisters. July 1975, an American Pilot in Florida sponsored us, helped us to resettle in Jacksonville Florida. We worked went to school, and started new lives with the loving help of so many generous people in the church. I picked odd jobs to help make the living for all of us: construction, electrician helper, machine operator for R.C. Cola company, while going to school at the same time.”

Yet, in spite of barely escaping the communist takeover, after being on one of last helicopters out of Saigon, having to come to a new country, and learn a new language and culture, Fr. Vang was determined to continue to pursue his vocation at a Redemptorist priest. Nothing can stop the grace of God. He wrote, “I looked for the Redemptorists in the Yellow Pages and contacted the Redemptorist community in Jacksonville Florida.

I first talked to Fr. Ed Gray, with my Irish accent, and then met Fr. John Barry who was the Vice-Provincial.” God blessed the Redemptorists that day and God blessed the thousands upon thousands of people in the United States, in Hong Cong, and in Vietnam who have been blessed by that phone call since it led to his taking vows as a Redemptorists on July 30, 1977. He was ordained a priest on May 28, 1983.

What miracles of love and grace the Holy Spirit has worked through the many skills and talents, driven by a caring heart, for so many. We thank God Fr. Ed Gray, who is now home with the Lord, picked up the phone that day and welcome this amazing young man into our Redemptorist family.

Fr. Vang has served in parish work here in the United States. His first assignment was in Opa-Locka, Florida working with English, Spanish and Haitian people. He started the first Vietnamese community which is now the flourishing parish of Our lady of La Vang. He also did parish minis try in the Concord and Kannapolis communities in North Carolina. He started the Vietnamese community in Charlotte, NC which is now to big parish of St. Joseph.

But this dedicated parish priest felt the calling of God, knowing what it was to be driven from one’s homeland, to move toward a call in his life. Knowing the desperate condition of the Boat People of exiled Vietnamese people living in the Detention Centers in Hong Kong, he asked his superiors to go there to serve. He was given a six month assignment serving where 21,000 refugees in twelve squalid camps surrounded by barb wire. When the Redemptorist superiors from Rome and Florida came to visit and see what Vang was doing in this ministry, they immediately decided that this should be his ministry for as long as possible since the pastoral needs were so important in the midst of such suffering. His six month assignment to the Boat People became a four year assignment to Hong Kong and Father Vang Tran only left when in 1997 China took over control of the city.

Father Vang Tran returned to the USA and began to preach missions all over the United States especially to the Vietnamese Catholics. When I think of his ministry, it reminds of me of the missionary work of St. Paul who traveled throughout the then known world in the first days of Christianity to create communities of faith. Vang has continued to travel all over the United States, building the connections with Vietnamese communities of Catholic faith. He stays in touch with them by zoom, email, cell phone, and personal visits. He travels more miles in a year that the all the pilots of America!

Since I now consider Vang my spiritual brother that makes him an official Irishman. He loves corned beef and shamrocks. Actually, part of his priestly story reflects the story of St. Patrick. Patrick was treated terribly in Ireland, made a slave and escaped to France. Yet, he loved Ireland and her people and went back in spite of all that had happened to him to go back and bring the good news of Jesus to the people.

Fr. Vang, driven out of his homeland by communism, still sought to go back to the nation that exiled him so he could bring the faith back to Vietnam especially to the persecuted Montenguard tribal people. His first trip back to Vietnam for was one month visit from South to North, which he had never been allowed to before because of the war. The Vietnamese Redemptorists took him to where they served, and he met the Montagnard community of lepers. He felt the call to come back to them regularly. So, thus he made another step to continue to say Yes to God and those people in great need.

Here is how he describes his present ministry: “Twice a year I go back to the Highlands for a month to work with bishops, priests, sisters, and lay leaders to not only provide most necessary and basic needs but most specially to build better future for our people through education.” This year 2023 marks the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Viet Toc Foundation which Father Vang helped create and direct. This organization under his direction continues to do remarkable service to those abandoned people. As you know whenever Fr. Vang is not doing all that very important work, he is so happy to assist in the parish ministry here at St. Mary’s Parish.

The word Jubilee is written about in the Old Testament. A Jubilee is a time to celebrate and thank God for what has gone in the Jewish nation over many years. It is also to see that God who has given so much grace during those years will continue to bless and protect the people in the days to come.

So, on this 40th Jubilee we have much to thank God for in the priestly life of Fr. Vang Tran. Only God himself knows how many lives that this good Redemptorist priest has touched who are both in heaven and here on earth. We say Alleluia for God has done through Fr. Vang. But we also know, that this Jubilee sends Fr. Vang, all those who work with him, and all of us, filled with the Holy Spirit to continue the spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

I will give Fr. Vang the last word: he wrote this to me: “I feel blessed that God uses me, His humble and very ordinary priest, for this mission for our suffering sisters and brothers. This work of the past 40 years is His work. It is a miracle that we survive, in spite of political challenges, and social opposition and other sensitive issues. Only by the grace of God has this been done I give thanks every day to God for the great people who open their hearts to share their love through sacrifices to help better the lives of so many who have been forgotten.”

Together we praise God for this great witness of priestly service. Alleluia.

God bless,

Fr. Woods

Frwoods@stmarysannapolis.org