In a private comment given while she was not yet beatified, Pope Pius X referred to Thérèse of Lisieux as “the greatest saint of modern times.” Well, I acknowledge the saintly pope’s remark (and its timing) and refer in response to “the greatest saint of postmodern times.” This is said a little cheekily and mischievously. But I also believe firmly that a fine postmodern exemplar of the Little Way is already on the path to beatification. His name is Marcel Văn.

I have often written on Văn in a thorough, almost technical way. It’s been necessary to do a little research, to put together ideas, and to display them, for they are very poorly known the world over, but especially in English.

Today—the 65^th anniversary of Marcel’s death—I want to do something different.

It’s a big day. I feel it pull a smile from one side of my face to the other. I just want to speak from the heart. For the most part, I’ll eschew referencing—though I’ll keep a few here and there in case I want to look a few specific incidents up later myself.

Little Văn lived in a world very different from his spiritual big sister. Fully committed to her teaching on the Little Way, he instantiated it in circumstances that are far more familiar to us today than its original network of relations. Here are some of those much more postmodern-leaning realities:

• Since he was Vietnamese, Văn experienced life as a Christian as part of a religious minority.
• He knew a lot about cracks in communication between generations, since the older generation of his parents learned to write Vietnamese in Chinese characters and his own generation in the modified Latin alphabet of modern Vietnamese. Analogies to accelerated technological development abound, though Văn might still know a more radical shift.
• Unlike Thérèse’s middle-class upbring, Văn knew his fair share of poverty—and not by European standards, but by those of his country.
• He lived through war and decolonization. Even terrorism is known to him (To Father Boucher, 22 Jan 1949). He speaks of a mine on a road (To Tế, 31 Jul 1949) and knows someone killed in a bombing raid (To Tế, 29 Nov 1951).
• Modern slavery would surprise him much less than Thérèse, for he himself ended up basically handed over to a priest who treated him as the parish’s “boy.”
• Race relations permeate a fair bit of his writing. None of the problems of fraternity and social friendship would surprise him.
• The partition of Vietnam induced a refugee crisis, and he understands both the right to leave (as his family did) and the right to remain (as is represented in his own choice to fly back to the Communist North as the borders were closing).
• One clear thread in his life is that he had a parent with substance and gambling addictions… which resulted in physical abuse and death threats towards one of Văn’s brothers and towards his mother… and then a temporary separation of the family, which Văn himself planned and brought about until his father could turn over a new leaf.
• In fact, the abused brother was vulnerable for a reason. Văn’s younger brother Lục was born with a disability (which Marcel mentions as “six fingers on each hand, six toes on each foot,” though I am not sure if this is a metaphor) and a very weak character and intellect, while his older brother Liệt developed a disability (blindness) at the onset of adolescence.
• He has thoughts on propaganda and the correct ways for Christians to communicate—as I’ve spoke about before.
• He lived his last years in an ideological reeducation and labour camp, which puts him in the same company as many of the martyrs of the 20^th century. Part of his final years was spent in dark solitary confinement.
• As I’ve written about extensively, he was a victim and survivor of clerical abuse—which he correctly and presciently spoke of as a global crisis. Marcel’s personal experience includes sexual assault, as well as recurring spiritual and psychological abuse.
• His method of putting his will into the souls of human beings who die before the age of reason and without baptism is highly suitable theology for a post-limbo belief system, as well as for the growing recourse to abortion and the increasing awareness of the prevalence of miscarriage. As prayer in hope, it is a very early example of what the International Theological Commission proposed to all Christians.

Could I go on? Probably. But already I’ve started to speak less from the heart and more from my head.

The sheer scope of the places to which Văn takes Thérèse’s spirituality is astounding.

Indeed, there is just something very postmodern about Marcel’s life—in his country, in his family, in the Church. That’s not to say Thérèse wouldn’t understand you in the postmodern world. Far from it! But if we are wondering what the Little Way looks like through the continual social dislocations characteristic of postmodernity, rather than the more stable external relations of the modern world, Văn is there to tell us. His life and writings illustrate it well. He opens doors that maybe we are—or at least I am—too slow or too hesitant to open ourselves. He’s been through a lot of similar stuff.

Postmodernity is the playground where Marcel Văn met with little Jesus and became a saint.

On this anniversary of his death, his entry into Life, I’d invite you to judge his greatness for yourself.