Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

Next weekend, November 29, 2014, we will begin our new liturgical calendar year; Pope Francis has proclaimed 2015 a year of Consecrated life, starting on the First Sunday of Advent and ending on February 2, 2016, the World day of Consecrated life. This will be a good year for us to pray for more young men and women to answer God’s call and generously join into consecrated life. For we all know that many dioceses in the United States are short of priests and nuns to serve in parishes, and many religious houses are sold because of the shortage of vocations. I thought that this is also a good opportunity for me to tell you a little bit more about me and my religious community.

I am Fr. Joseph Minh Nguyen, a member of the Domus Dei Clerical Society of Apostolic Life. I was born in 1976 in Dong Nai, Vietnam – one of five Children of Thanh Van Nguyen (deceased) and Buoi Thi Nguyen. I am the second oldest in my family and have an older sister, a younger brother, and two younger sisters. I’ll be with you for 3 years, if this is God’s will. It’s all depending on the special needs of my Superior, or the Bishop, that I may have to move to another place.

My whole family left Vietnam and came to the United States in 1995, right after I graduated from high school. We are greatly blessed by God, and thankful to the U.S government, for the opportunity to emigrate here to live in order to have freedom. My parents served as police officers for the U.S government in South Vietnam before 1975 and after the communists took control they took over our house and property. They also put my father in political camp (jail) for more than 5 years. Thereafter, we did not have many opportunities to go to college or enter religious life. We didn’t have any help from the government either. We had to work very hard to sustain ourselves by farming, and breeding chickens and pigs.

We first settled in Great Bend, Kansas, a very small town. While there, I went back to high school to study English as well as other subjects. I once again graduated from high school, this time in Great Bend, in 1996. We lived in Great Bend for a year and then moved to Lincoln, Nebraska.

In the summer of 1996, while living in Lincoln, I didn’t know what major to study in college. I attended daily Mass and prayed to God to give me the answer. About two months later, the thought of becoming a priest had overtaken all other thoughts. Along with respect and honor, I thought I would have more peace in my heart and soul than by pursuing any other occupation. The mother of a priest who lives in Louisiana told me to contact the Domus Dei Society. I joined Domus Dei in August of 1996.

Domus Dei was founded in 1630 by a Jesuit missionary named Alexander de Rhodes, and the society has a long history of evangelization. After 1954, when Vietnam was divided in two, many Catholics moved from the Communist North to the South where they could freely practice their religion. During this time, Domus Dei members helped immigrants adapt to the culture and environment in their new land. That ended in 1975, when the Communists overtook the South as well. Many Domus Dei Religious fled the county to the United States, where the mission has continued. The three components to the community’s charisms are: living together in the spirit of brotherhood and supporting one another in ministries; helping families live according to the model of the Holy Family; and obeying the local Bishop or Archbishop and carrying out the mission under his directives.

My Society sent me to St. Joseph Seminary College in Covington, LA and I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy in 2004. I then earned a Master of Divinity degree at Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans, LA in 2008. I was ordained as a priest on June, 5^th 2010 in Portland, Oregon.

My ministry assignments have included clinical Pastoral Education at Princeton Baptist Medical Center in Birmingham, AL, All Saints Parish in Portland, OR, and at St. Joseph Church in Grand Prairie, TX where I served as a transitional deacon for 6 months. I then served as Associate Pastor at the Co-Cathedral in Houma-Thibodaux, Louisiana for two and a half years as my very first assignment in the priesthood. Recently, I was at St. Michael in Olympia, WA to help throughout the summer.

I speak Vietnamese, English, and just a little bit of Spanish. I embrace priestly practices from both cultures (Vietnamese and American). I am here to learn more about how to serve as a priest in an English speaking parish and to get to know more about American culture so that later, I can be a good shepherd for my own Vietnamese people or for whenever the Lord would lead and send me.

I hope to get to know you all more by telling me your name when you meet me, so that I may greet you by name when I meet you again.

Fr. Joseph Minh Nguyen, SDD