ST Augustine left behind an estimated five million words when he died, including the oldest monastic rule in the Catholic Church, and at any moment, Fr Tuấn Anh Lê will be asked to spread his oeuvre in Vietnam.
Fr Lê is one of several young Vietnamese men chosen to maintain the order’s first mission house in Vietnam.
Despite centuries of Augustinians spreading throughout the world, including parts of Asia, the order only established its first mission house in Vietnam two years ago.
This means the legacy of St Augustine, one of the most influential thinkers in the West, and now Fr Lê’s favourite saint, is relatively unknown in Vietnam.
“People I know have heard about St Augustine, but to talk about Augustinian spirituality or the spirituality of St Augustine, it’s not something very popular in Vietnam,” Fr Lê said.
Fr Lê has spent the past eight years in Australia preparing to be a priest for the mission, and growing to love the saint who inspired the order’s establishment in the thirteenth century.
“The Augustinians probably chose me, not myself chose the Augustinian,” Fr Lê said.
Fr Lê was ordained to the priesthood on May 22, so he could be asked at any time to return home for his specific mission.
“How to tell the story of St Augustine to Vietnam and how he can contribute a part to the Vietnamese people,” Fr Lê said.
Although born in Vietnam, Fr Lê has spent the majority of his adulthood in Australia, including one year and nine months in Brisbane.
“I try to make home wherever I go, that’s the best way because I can’t take my parents with me,” Fr Lê said.
“I don’t have any close relatives here but I have a lot of friends, so that’s the lucky part.
“During the ordination and thanksgiving Mass I was really blessed to have parishioners here and so many friends from different states coming here for the ordination, and they are like family as well.”
When Fr Lê does return home, he expects to experience the same culture shock as when he arrived in Australia as a 23-year-old in 2013.
“I have to do a lot of adjustment, I’m sure,” Fr Lê said.
“Even though I grew up (in Vietnam), there’s a gap in terms of culture, working environment, the working style.
“I think they will be new to me when I go back to Vietnam and I have to adjust to that.”
St Augustine is a relatively new saint for Fr Lê, who came to know the influential saint while studying English at university in Hanoi, Vietnam’s capital.
He resonates deeply with St Augustine’s description of the restless heart, penned in his Confessions, and which is the emblem for the Augustinians: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”
“The key is really the restlessness, it’s the journey of searching for the mystery of faith and the mystery of life as well,” Fr Lê said.
“There’s a lot of mysteries so we have to search for it, but at the end it’s the restless search for God.”
Less than a week after his ordination, Fr Lê is already feeling the restlessness of not knowing how long God will let him stay in Australia.
“I’d love to work here for some time and have some more pastoral experience, but if I need to go back there and build up something, I will go too,” Fr Lê said.
“I think the plan would be I’ll go back to Vietnam sometime soon, but I don’t know how soon.
“The struggle at the moment is probably to discern God’s call as well.
“It’s like the call is already there, I’ve been responding to that call and come to this point to become a priest, but the discernment process just keeps going – ‘What do you want me to do in the next two years, God?’
“I don’t know but I have to discern about that one.”
But where the unknown makes him restless, his ordination, which was shown to his “overjoyed” parents in Vietnam, was “a very peaceful moment”.
“I always said to myself, and I got this mindset…’Enjoy the moment’,” Fr Lê said.
“I’ll trust people can do everything, and my job was to enjoy it and to be thankful for the moment and thankful for the gift God’s given me at the time.
“I think I did that pretty well, I enjoyed it and felt very peaceful at that moment.”
Fr Lê’s advice to other young people who are wrestling with a call to religious life was to have “a healthy curiosity” and have the courage to try out the vocation.
“Just be open and curious to the call,” Fr Lê said.
“I think that’s what I was thinking and I was before, I was curious about religious life and wanted to find out more about that one.
“And the second is to have courage to go for that and give it a try.”
