Episode Transcript
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I feel that I'm grateful to God
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with all the gifts God has given to me.
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To come to the end of my formation
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of priesthood in seminary.
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Well I think it's very exciting,
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I feel very excited to sort of be reaching the end point so to speak.
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But at the same time it's really a bit of a new beginning in a way.
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I guess I sort of first thought about
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priesthood probably when I was in secondary school.
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But it was in a very abstract kind of way.
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And I was an altar server at the time
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at Corpus Christi Church in Nundah.
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And you know, I'm sort of looking around at this place,
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this you know, strange building
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and I'm thinking, oh this is pretty interesting,
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you know, maybe, I'd like to
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do something related to this, you know, down the track.
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After secondary school, I did a psychology degree.
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And then I was in a transitional kind of point in my life
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where the sort of stuff I was doing at the time I thought,
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well this has really got to be a very temporary phase
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and I've got to pivot
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and it was at that point that I was discerning
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and in Canali House.
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From there, I went on to the seminary, yeah.
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I grew up in the Catholic family.
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My parents always took me to the church
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very early in the morning, before 4am.
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That make me feel if I miss Mass, I need to go.
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Seven years old I said to myself,
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Lord I want to become a priest.
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After that, I came up to the parish priest and said,
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can I become like you in the future?
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And he said to me,
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yes you can, but you have to study hard.
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From that moment, I tried all the best I can
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to study, and to get up early,
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go to the church often, doing altar serving properly.
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So when I finished high school,
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I spent four years studies
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at university in Da Nang in Vietnam.
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I lived with my grand uncle, he's a parish priest in Vietnam.
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So I lived with my uncle almost twelve years,
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in the presbytery, in the church.
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That make me feel, you know,
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God's calling me to follow his vocation to the priesthood.
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Well, I think in this seminary there's a very healthy mix
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of affirmation and challenge.
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And it's always in this spirit of
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what's good for you as a seminarian,
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and also what's going to be good for the parishes.
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I've just been in awe at the way the people
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open their lives to you in a way.
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And that's always something that's deeply impressed me
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because really the parishes
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are all about relationships, all about your connection to people.
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The fact that that starts here in the seminary is very helpful.
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Here we all train to become the priests
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to serve God and people.
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So I'm very grateful with the staff in the seminary.
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And I will never forget their work for me.
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And I feel them, they are like my family.
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My friends and family, they really supported me.
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Especially when I come to Australia,
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it's not really easy for me, many times I thought I may give up.
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But I can feel their prayers for me.
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Even my vocation to the priesthood is from them
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because they brought me to the church often,
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make me feel the presence of God in my life
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even sometimes I said to my mum,
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oh, why you took me to the church even I
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went there and I just sleep there?
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But my mom said, you know,
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you sleep in God's hand better than you sleep at home.
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Friends and family are
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a tremendous support to you throughout the process.
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A priest told me before I entered,
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no matter what you will learn from this encounter,
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you will be stronger by the end of it.
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And I think if you go in with that sort of attitude of
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I am testing a vocation,
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that will take a bit of the pressure out of it
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and perhaps you'll hear the voice of God a bit clearer in that.
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The priesthood makes present
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for the purposes of prayer,
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the apostolic ministry really.
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So I think of the priesthood, in a sense of,
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you know, uniting God's people
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for prayer in the name of Christ
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that's what I like to think of
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what I'm doing in ministry.
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Many saints
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they from the European or other country go to Vietnam
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to bring the Good News.
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But now I can see a lot of Vietnamese priests
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and people, now they bring the Good News
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to other countries again, it's not end, it's continue,
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and that's why, you know, God is calling me and other younger ones to follow Christ.
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We don't know where we going,
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we just follow Christ in our hearts.
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I know God's present with me and I hope I can see God in my life.
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And I see God in my ministry and see God in other people.
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I'll just say, you know, pray for me this ordination.
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I'm not worthy with all this,
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but in God's hand, God had chosen me.
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I feel very blessed
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from God and then also from people.
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Thank you so much for your prayers,
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I'm very humbled by it,
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consistently humbled by it,
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when I run into someone in a parish and they say,
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Oh, I know you from the calendar,
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I pray for you on this day.
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I just, it always gets me a little bit,
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always gets me a little bit.
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We haven't done it of ourselves,
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but by many hands and the Holy Spirit behind it all.
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So thank you so much to everyone.
