Father Mario Rassiga, sdb, the author of the
“I’m sure it is not exact”
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- Progess in spiritual life
- Fr. Giacomino Minh in Bùi Chu
- The Director of the Holy Infancy Society 1
- One intervention leading to another
- A visit to Sơn Tây city
“I’m sure it is not exact”In order to continue receiving pensions from the Social Department, annual financial reports must be submitted. In fact the reports were presented, but Mrs. Dubois used to spend very lavishly while the good economer Fr. Vacher Vuong made the balance reports in a rather easy way. The Social Department Director asked Fr. Majcen: “Can you be sure these expenses are correct?” “I’m sure it is not exact”, answered Fr. Majcen sincerely, and he explained to him that with only three months in office he was unable to take full control of the administration. The Director laughed, and from then on he became a close friend of Fr. Majcen until the end of 1974. Progess in spiritual lifeAll of us were convinced that our works were always in difficult conditions and we had to rely entirely on “Our help comes from the Lord” and on Mary Help of Christians who did everything. With his great zeal, Fr. Giacomino when working at Thái Hà Ấp introduced some types of Salesian practices including the novena of the Immaculate Conception in preparation for Christmas, and the daily reciting of the Rosary, as well as the monthly celebration of Mary Help of Christians on every 24th day of the month, and the more frequent confession. The school also took all possible opportunities to promote the attendance of the Mass, by attendance first on every Sunday then daily. This renovation did not please everybody, and some priests even considered it as too much. Of course they were not against the practices of piety, they were only afraid of introducing a pious system of a school style. Nevertheless the renovation helped to make Christmas celebrations become more fervent and the Te Deum was sung more enthusiastically at the end of the year. Fr. Giacomino Minh in Bùi ChuFr. Giacomino Minh started learning Vietnamese in Ba Thá. On the Tết (February 1953), with the permission of Ha Noi Bishop, he accepted Mgr. Chi’s invitation to come to Bui Chu to continue his Vietnamese studies. Bùi Chu was an important diocese for many fervent Christians, with a beautiful church and a seminary full of seminarians. The purpose of Mgr. Chi’s invitation was that Fr. Giacomino could go to Bui Chu and establish a Salesian work there. This might be a good idea, but the disturbing political situation prevented the development of this idea. The Director of the Holy Infancy Society1 visited Fr. MajcenMgr. Seitz invited the Director of the Holy Infancy Society that had their office in Paris (now in Rome) to visit the Orphanage. Mgr. Seitz had previously written to this Society an application for aids with an annual financial report attached, and the Orphanage’s needs, and explained that the Salesians would come to take over the Orphanage. The Director promise to help because he knew the works of the Salesians of Don Bosco. In particular he was interested in the children of the kindergarten and the small orphans by the war, who were the majority of the Orphanage’s children. I have received this Society’s aids for the orphans every year until 1974. One intervention leading to anotherMgr. Seitz wanted to make a family of both big and small boys living together. This was a good idea in its presentation, but I noticed that this kind of family was in reality not the kind of natural families with a father and a mother, but a mixed family with big and small boys sleeping in the same dormitory, and some of them had been victims of evil, and of abuses from the bigger ones, not only by obliging the smaller ones to serve them, but also by making the smaller ones victims of immoral acts. When he noticed an immoral case happened, Fr. Majcen ordered Fr. Faugère and assistant Trần to investigate and eventually dismiss the abuser. This intervention encouraged Fr. Majcen to find other better arrangements and applied them after consultation with the Provincial. A visit to Sơn Tây cityBa Vì is a big mountain range of soil and limestone covering an area of 5,000 hectares including three districts Ba Vì (Hà Nội), Lương Sơn and Kỳ Sơn (Hoà Bình), about 60 kilometers from Hà Nội.  
Ba Vì has several mounts, the most famous of which is Tản Viên (also called Ngọc Tản Sơn or Phượng Hoàng Sơn). Tản Viên is 1,281 m high, tapering near its top but spreading at its summit to form an umbrella (that was why it was called Tản [傘], meaning spreading). There is a Ha (Lower) Temple at its foot, a Trung (Medium) Temple in the middle, and a Thượng (Higher) Temple at its top dedicated to Sơn Tinh (Tản god). At the mountain foot is the Đà River, and an artificial lake called Suối Hai 7 km long and 4 km large with 14 islets that actually are small hills emerging from the water. Fr. Majcen had for a long time taken notice of the badge on the childrens’ shirts on which were printed the words: Christ the King City 1943-1953 with the Ba Vì (three-top mountain) image and a star on top, symbol of Our Lady of Ba Vì. Fr. Faugère’s jeep took us acrossa large beautiful field with small villages, stretches of bananas and coconut trees, with thatched houses scattered here and there. We stopped before Sơn Tây City, a city founded by King Minh Mạng whose persecutions killed a great number of our martyrs. I read on a stele names of innumerable men and women who had offered their lives for their faith. With a sense of devotion I went with Fr. Faugère to a grassland nearby, where the Vietnamese martyrs had shed their blood. I knelt down, praying the Lord to give me strength and faith. We looked up to the mountain where the Vietminh currently had their camps, and we fancied that it was there the Salesian works in Vietnam had begun. Fr. Faugère continued explaining that there had been a church, dormitories and small villas, all had been built by Mgr. Seitz but had then been destroyed by French bombings. Mgr. Seitz repeatedly told us that we would receive 1 million dong (a very big sum) for indemnities. Walking along the plot, I noticed a location called Thanh, where there had been a Japanese airbase wherefrom they sent their aircrafts to bomb Kunming. There were here buildings with one-meter roofs to shelter the aircrafts. A little farther, I saw the ruins of a village that had entirely been rased to the ground by bombing, except a lonely church of Son Tay that still stood superbly like a Cathedral! There was nearby a parish with a French parish priest who was loved so much by the Vietnamese, because he used to give medicines to their sick. Christ’s charity does not discriminate this side or that side: it is only concerned with those members of Christ who suffer. It was from here, amid the ruins of war, that the Christ the King City had gathered the children of the victims of destructive wars, including Bro. Tho, now a Salesian lay brother, who had been abandoned here after his parents were killed, together with some other boys who worked as shoepolishers on the streets of Hà Nội for a living. Directory: resource -> doc resource -> The University of York 13th 16th April 2004 resource -> Biological and Biomedical Sciences Program Community Education Initiative doc -> As a result of the particular combination of Member of doc -> Apc smart-ups® for select ibm® pSeries Servers apc's Smart-ups provide the ideal enhancements for high-availability systems when used with ibm's pSeries Servers doc -> Ip telephony Shutdown Software for the InfraStruXure™ Architecture cisco callmanager 0 (2) Abstract doc -> 1st children and media congress in turkey doc -> The first children’s rights congress in turkey doc -> Take italian to your school doc -> Health and Autism Needs, Rights, Responsibilities and Widening Perspectives Download 11.74 Mb. Share with your friends:
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