Novices and postulants
Posted on 01/23/2020 6:12:32 PM PST by marshmallow
The Abbey of Our Lady of Phước Sơn is home to 220 monks, including 80 novices and postulants. In Vietnam, there are about 1,002 Cistercian monks and 244 Cistercian nuns.
Novices and postulants
Phước Sơn (AsiaNews) – “Young Vietnamese are attracted to the monastic life,” says Fr Gioan Baotixita Dung, a Cistercian monk at the Abbey of Our Lady of Phước Sơn.
The abbey, which is about 70 km south of Ho Chi Minh City not far from Vũng Tàu, is home to 220 monks, 80 of whom are novices and postulants. In addition to work and prayer, the monastery is also a place for theological study.
Introducing some young novices, Fr Dung explains that Vietnamese religiosity is rooted in ancient Buddhist and Taoist traditions. When some decide to enter a monastery, the country’s history of persecution plays a role, leading to radical choices in life.
Like in any Benedictine monastery, the monks work to achieve food self-sufficiency, growing rice, medicinal plants; they also clean and work in the laundry and kitchen. Part of the rice harvest is donated to the poor.
The abbey also has a building to host local believers for retreats and spiritual exercises.
The chapel is the central building, built in the oriental style with a pointed roof, a token by Cistercian monks to bring Benedictine life closer to Vietnamese culture. This was also the goal of its founder, Fr Henri Denis (1880-1933), who led the Benedictine experience.
Fr Denis had come to Vietnam as a missionary with the Société des Missions Etrangères de Paris (Society of Foreign Missions of Paris). He had chosen the monastic life in 1918 taking the name of Benoît (Benedict) and began to gather around him many young people attracted by a life of austerity life and community.
(Excerpt) Read more at asianews.it ...
She looks like the same woman where I get a pedicure.
Care to share the address? LOL.
If you live in the USA you traveled a LONG way to go on a retreat. I'm sure you got much peace and solace from it.
This country is STUFFED with pedi/mani places. The problem is that many get shut down for health infringements. The women at the place I go to are all south east Asian but I know that racially they are Chinese.
They deny it until they realize that I can tell a Chinese person from any other Oriental Asian person. They ARE from southeast Asia but they ARE Chinese, racially.
I learned this a long time ago by asking a Chinese student I had HOW could he tell a Chinese person from other Oriental Asians. He told me...and now I know. It was TRUE!
They sure did.
Faith is essential but French bakeries? YUM!
...
My husband and I lived overseas and traveled EXTENSIVELY. I'm traveled out and don't even want to LOOK at a suitcase.
Enjoy it while you can.
I have friends there with whom I stay- no hotels. I am pretty involved with several families. I go to weddings and funerals. The only tourist things I do are when my host wants to go look at a part of the country he has never seen, then we go traveling for a few days. Doing a tour as a local is much better than as a foreigner. We sees a lot more as the foreigners don’t even get out of bed before 8 o’clock when we have been out for three and a half hours already.
It was always the same for us. When people visited they stayed at our home. I enjoyed taking them around, eating at different and new restaurants.
Remember "foreigners" may be on a clock that is VERY different from yours. Going from the USA to Europe or Asia means a HUGE time differential so their getting up at an hour YOU deem late MAY be 4:00 A.M. for them on their own clock.
Walk a bit in their shoes before you criticize them.
Just sayin.'
Also AGE makes a bit difference. If you are younger than fifty years old the travel and time changes are FAR EASIER to deal with that when you are in your seventies.
I am 73. I didn’t go back there the first time till I was 57. The front room in the house where I stay is mine. I guaranteed the loan for Thông to get the materials to build it 12 years ago. I don’t have to carry luggage when I go, my clothes are all there. I carry a check bag just for the TSA. It has Salvation Army clothes in it and I sometimes done’t even retrieve it. Thông’s wife says I am a wannabe expat.
Looks like you're all set, clothes and all.
Nice to have your own part of the house...especially since you GUARANTEED a loan for him.
And, since you can afford to discard clothes, albeit Salvation Army duds...I'd say you're just another rich American who can have her cake and eat it too. Good for you.
Maybe it's more comfortable for you to be with people who look like you and not the one ASIAN person in the crowd. Also it seems to be a good stereotype that the elders are respected by other Oriental Asians...NOT "throwaway" people at all.
So, your heart is really in Việt Nam. Maybe it was a shame that you ever had to leave there.
My ashes will be here in my own home and country...in a dual plot with my deceased husband.
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