Five Loaves and Two Fish

Thirteen years in prison, nine years in solitary confinement. Five loaves and two fish. “Stay with us,” prayed the disciples on the road to Emmaus. So he took bread, blessed it, and gave it to them to eat.

Yesterday, at the 49th International Eucharistic Congress in Quebec City, the sister of the late Cardinal Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan, delivered a moving address on her brother’s life in the communist prison camps of South Vietnam—and the sustenance he found in the Eucharist. Cardinal Thuan, whose cause for canonization was opened last fall, reflected on the source of his strength in a powerful little volume, Five Loaves and Two Fish . Here, his sister recalls the intimate Eucharistic love to which her brother boldly witnessed—even in Communist Vietnam, even in a hidden prison cell:

During an interview with the media after his release, he was asked what his secret strength had been that kept him alive and sane. His answer was always, “The Eucharist.” He explained how when he was arrested, he had to leave immediately, empty-handed. The following day he was allowed to write to his faithful to ask for some personal effects. He wrote: “Please send me a little wine as medicine for my stomach pain.” They understood right away. A few days later, the guards handed him a small container addressed to him, and labeled “Medicine for stomach aliments.” He also received another small container containing small pieces of Holy Host.

With three drops of wine and a drop of water in the palm of his hand, he would celebrate Mass. “Each time I celebrated Mass, I had the opportunity to extend my hands and nail myself to the cross with Jesus, to drink with Him the bitter chalice” ( Testimony of Hope ). And those were the most beautiful Masses of his life.

. . . He always carried in his shirt pocket the little container holding the Blessed Sacrament. He would repeat “Jesus, You in me and I in You” adoring the Father. Van Thuan reminds us, throughout his writing, that it is not enough to celebrate the Eucharist strictly according to the liturgical rites.

He points out to all of us that Christ offered his sacrifice with immense fervour, as in the hour of His passion and crucifixion, when He obeyed the Father; and this, even to the point of His humiliating death on the cross to bring back to the Father a redeemed humanity and a purified creation. ln prison with the Eucharistic Jesus in their midst, Christian and non-Christian prisoners slowly received the grace to understand that each present moment of their lives in the most inhuman conditions can be united with the supreme sacrifice of Jesus and lifted up as an act of solemn adoration to God the Father. Together each day, Thuan would remind himself and encouraged everyone to pray: Lord, grant that we may offer the Eucharistic sacrifice with love, that we accept to carry the cross, and to be nailed to it to proclaim Your glory, to serve our brothers and sisters.

. . . I would like to end my reflections with those tender thoughts recorded on the Feast of the Holy Rosary, October 7, 1976, in Phu-Khanh prison, during his solitary confinement: “I am happy here, in this cell, where white mushrooms are growing on my sleeping mat, because You are here with me, because You want me to live here with You. I have spoken much in my lifetime: now I speak no more. It’s Your turn to speak to me, Jesus; I am listening to You.”