François-Xavier Nguyễn Văn Thuận
1928-2002 20th century
Hope in the present tense: when the future is confiscated, filling with love the minute at hand.
Who was François-Xavier Nguyễn Văn Thuận?
A Vietnamese bishop named coadjutor of Saigon a week before the city fell in 1975, arrested a few months later: thirteen years of camps and prison, nine of them in solitary confinement. On smuggled calendar pages he wrote messages of hope that became The Road of Hope, and celebrated Mass in secret with three drops of wine in the palm of his hand. Freed and then exiled, made a cardinal in 2001, he was declared venerable in 2017.
In their own words
I live the present moment, filling it to the brim with love.
I will seize the occasions that present themselves every day; I will accomplish ordinary actions in an extraordinary way.
Why do you torment yourself so? You must learn to distinguish between God and the works of God. Everything you have done are God's works, but they are not God.