Who is Marcel Văn, you ask? Only one of the most important people in my life—and the lives of many others. Since relaunching this blog, I haven’t yet come back to Văn, focused as I have been on Pope Francis’ consolidation and enrichment of the fundamentals of Christian contemplation. But that silence won’t last. I can’t stay away from Văn forever.

Little Văn (1928–1959) was a Vietnamese Redemptorist brother with a very simple soul. He was the victim of clerical abuse, beatings, and attempted molestation as a child; had to live on the streets for some time; discovered a mission of “changing sadness into joy”; conversed with Thérèse, Jesus, and Mary familiarly from time to time; struggled to love the colonialists in his country, but learned to live social fraternity anyway; was sentenced to 15 years in prison by the communists in Viet Nam after he went back to the North so that someone would love Jesus even there; and died in an internment camp.

Văn’s cause for beatification is as a confessor, not martyr, of the faith, partly because many involved in the process believe, as I myself do, that he is a potential candidate for Doctor of the Church, possibly the first from the non-Western, non-Mediterranean world. If you think about things that way, little Văn is a big deal. This is someone whose acquaintance one might think twice about passing up.

But Marcel Văn is important to me not just for who he might one day be, but for who he is now. This young brother has touched the lives of many people with his path of littleness, and several of them share their stories, as well as Văn’s, in the 2009 film Marcel Van, Hidden Apostle of Love, by Vu Dinh Khôi. The film itself is in French but has good English subtitles, thanks to Jack Keogan, translator of Marcel Văn’s complete works. Highly recommended viewing for the weekend—or anytime at all.