 First
Vows
by Br. Francis-Hung Quang Le, OP
My name is Francis-Hung Quang Le. I was born in Vietnam. I come from a Catholic family of
eight children. I am the next to the last. As a youngster, I preferred fishing to going to
school. And this passion, of course, reflected on my monthly report cards from school. I
was normally ranked either last or next to the last in class. It seemed to some people
that I was competing in the wrong direction.
In 1977, two years after the fall of the South, my parents had a surprise for me; they
allowed one of my older sisters to take me and to escape from the country by boat, along
with 135 other people. Until I was put on the boat, I had not realized at the time that I
had seen my family for the last time. I was not told of the plan because it was common
knowledge in the family that I often talked too much with other people (And now you
probably know half the reason why I've joined the Dominicans!).
After getting loss at sea for 3 or 4 days, and staying on the boat for 2 months and
then spending 4 more months on one of the Malaysian islands; my sister and I were allowed
to come to America and we finally were settled in Santa Barbara, CA.
The first time I had the idea of becoming a priest was in my Junior High School years.
I had an opportunity to study at the seminary, but my sister thought I was too young to
make such a serious commitment. In addition, my English was very limited. Thanks be to
God, the idea stayed with me throughout my college years. And in 1989, on the day I
graduated from the University of California Santa Barbara as an electrical engineer, I
made known to my sister that in seven years I would seek the priesthood. My sister told me
then and there that she thought I was ready. I chose a waiting period of seven years
mainly because I wanted to work in order to help my sister in sending financial support to
our family in Vietnam.
Those seven years were a very fulfilling time for me. I enjoyed very much my career as
a hardware design engineer for a Digital Signal Processing company in Silicon Valley.
Friends and people with whom I came into contact with everyday, taught me valuable lessons
for life. However, my having to face with distractions and negative sentiments toward the
priestly life from the public during that period, did challenge me to keep my religious
vocation. I managed to maintain tranquility in my life by principally attending daily
Mass and meditating upon the mysteries of the Rosary. I had time to think seriously again
about the religious and married life. For me, both life-time commitments are natural and
important to me. However, I also recognized the fact that both commitments are mutually
exclusive. Through the grace of God "which is beyond all understanding," I chose
freely to pursue a religious vocation. I am choosing such a way of life because there is
the deeply rooted desire in me to offer myself totally to God and Him alone. And so, in
the seventh year of the waiting period, I began to search for a place to live out the life
I was called to live. I ended up applying to a place to which I had no previous
connection, the Western Dominican Province. I found the province one day by glancing
through a vocation book called "Your Choice." As I was shopping through
"Your Choice" to make my choice, what attracted me to the Dominicans was the
charism of their life: the life of community and of preaching. I joined the Dominican
Order simply because their lifestyle fits me. It encompasses both the contemplative as
well as the active life. The common life suits me because I need to be nourished by a life
of communal prayer, of study and of fraternal services to one another. At the same time, I
want to share the fruits of my contemplation with the people whom God wants me to minister
to.
On August 31, 1997, gratefully moved by the grace of God, I made my simple vows as a
Dominican Friar. For me, making the vows means making a conscious commitment to offer my
entirety to God, one day at a time, so that His will be done and so that my joy may be
complete. Despite my shortcomings, I am not worry to have made the vows, because as a
Dominican Friar, I can always count on my confreres to guide me and to challenge me
fraternally to follow Christ in the spirit of our Father Dominic.
First Vows |
