Overcoming communism, threats and obstacles, sisters raise house of prayer 

Farmington Hills — Fifteen years ago, Sr. Mary Thomas Michalek, OP, then-prioress of the Cloistered Dominican Nuns in Farmington Hills, received a visiting Vietnamese sister with a request — a dream, really — of establishing the first community of Cloistered Dominicans in the communist country of Vietnam.

This spring, that dream became a reality as the Monastery of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit in Ho Nai celebrated its formal approval by the Church and the installation of its first prioress, all with help from the Michigan congregation.

The Cloistered Dominicans living at the Monastery of the Blessed Sacrament in Farmington Hills had sponsored the foundation of new communities in the past — in Vancouver, B.C., and Albany, N.Y., for example — but nothing quite like this.

The visiting sister, Sr. Maria Rose Huong, “always had this desire, and didn’t know how it was going to happen, but somehow the Lord led her to the United States,” said Sr. Mary Peter Fox, OP, current prioress of the Farmington Hills cloister. “She knocked on our door, completely a surprise to us.”

A Dominican who had studied in Kentucky but was mother general of an apostolic congregation in Vietnam, Sr. Huong noted to Sr. Michalek that a cloistered community was the only branch of Dominicans not represented in the strict Asian country. After asking permission to enter the cloister with the other nuns at the Farmington Hills monastery for a few days of discernment, Sr. Huong immediately felt “at home” in the contemplative life of prayer, study and work behind the monastery’s walls, and the ball began rolling for her and a few other Vietnamese sisters to make their novitiates there.

“We were delighted,” Sr. Fox said. “They didn’t know English, but of course they grew in their language skills when they got here. They were all very eager to learn.”

 



Faith at gunpoint

In 1999 and 2000, the first two sisters from Vietnam — Sr. Huong and Sr. Theresa Tam — arrived at the Monastery of the Blessed Sacrament as the first members of the envisioned foundation. They were soon followed by three others: Sr. Theresa Khanh, Sr. Pauline Ve and Sr. Jeanne Hao.

Sr. Fox said the Michigan nuns “received far more than we gave” from the Vietnamese sisters during their novitiates. “When you get new people, they’re very fervent, and they helped us improve our spirit. We were very conscious that we wanted to give them a good formation and good example in our way of life.”

The Vietnamese nuns also provided a stark example of the price Christians are often asked to pay for their faith, Sr. Fox said. During the communist takeover, Sr. Theresa Khanh had been captured and imprisoned with about 60 other women for a number of days, she said.

“At one point before they let them go, one of the guards looked at her and said ‘You’re a Christian?’ She said, ‘Yes, I’m a Christian,’” Sr. Fox related. “He wanted her to deny Christ, and she said no. He said, ‘if you don’t deny Christ, I’m going to shoot you.’ He pulled out a gun and pointed it at her and she said, ‘OK, fine. I’d go home to Jesus.’ He looked at her and put the gun away.”

But when they were finally let go, “she had to walk about 90 miles to get to her home with no food or resources,” Sr. Fox said.

When two nuns from Michigan first visited Vietnam to obtain permission for the new foundation from the bishop there, they couldn’t wear their religious habits into the country for fear of the government, Sr. Fox said.

“One time, they were supposed to come back to one of the convents in the evening after being there earlier, and in between that time the police visited that convent and spoke to the superior and said ‘Who were the two foreigners who visited this morning?’ And she said, ‘What foreigners?’ Then she called the sisters and said ‘Don’t come back tonight.’”

 

17 and counting

Although the government has since eased up, and the requisite approvals given for the new monastery, Sr. Fox said the significance of the accomplishment isn’t lost on anyone.

“It’s a great joy to know you had a little tiny part at least in spreading this beautiful ministry to another part of the world where otherwise it might not have happened at all,” Sr. Fox said. “You can see the joy on their faces and on the friars and sisters and laity who know about them. It’s beautiful.”

In the 12 years since the first cloistered nuns received permission to remain in Vietnam for formation, the Vietnamese community has grown to a total of 17, nine of whom are in some stage of formation. Although one of the original sisters, Sr. Mary Pauline Ve, opted to remain in Farmington Hills, she and Sr. Michalek were present for the March 25 Mass celebrating the Vietnam monastery’s independence and the installation of Sr. Hao, another of the original five, as the community’s first prioress.

Having a cloistered presence of prayer warriors in a part of the world where Christianity isn’t always tolerated means a “great deal,” Sr. Fox said, adding that Sr. Huong, who originally brought the idea to the Farmington Hills monastery, also had family members of previous generations killed for the faith.

“The blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians,” she said. “It’s a really vibrant faith there that really challenges some of us to really give our lives to the Lord.”

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