As Deacons Sean and Sang prepare to be ordained to the priesthood on June 13, they share in this video the heartfelt journeys that have brought them to this sacred moment. Through stories of childhood faith, family support, and the challenges and joys of seminary life, they reflect on how God has gently guided them—sometimes in unexpected ways—toward a life of service. As you listen to their journeys of discernment, we invite you to pray that the Holy Spirit will fill them with courage, compassion, and zeal as they look to begin their lifelong ministry. May Deacons Sean and Sang’s witness inspire each of us to be open to God’s call in our own lives, and to trust that—even when the path is uncertain—God’s grace is always at work, drawing us closer to Him and to one another.
Transcript
I feel that I’m grateful to God with all the gifts God has given to me. To come to the end of my formation of priesthood in seminary. Well I think it’s very exciting, I feel very excited to sort of be reaching the end point so to speak. But at the same time it’s really a bit of a new beginning in a way.
I guess I sort of first thought about priesthood probably when I was in secondary school. But it was in a very abstract kind of way. And I was an altar server at the time at Corpus Christi Church in Nundah. And you know, I’m sort of looking around at this place, this you know, strange building and I’m thinking, oh this is pretty interesting, you know, maybe, I’d like to do something related to this, you know, down the track. After secondary school, I did a psychology degree. And then I was in a transitional kind of point in my life where the sort of stuff I was doing at the time I thought, well this has really got to be a very temporary phase and I’ve got to pivot and it was at that point that I was discerning and in Canali House. From there, I went on to the seminary, yeah. I grew up in the Catholic family. My parents always took me to the church very early in the morning, before 4am. That make me feel if I miss Mass, I need to go. Seven years old I said to myself, Lord I want to become a priest. After that, I came up to the parish priest and said, can I become like you in the future? And he said to me, yes you can, but you have to study hard. From that moment, I tried all the best I can to study, and to get up early, go to the church often, doing altar serving properly. So when I finished high school, I spent four years studies at university in Da Nang in Vietnam. I lived with my grand uncle, he’s a parish priest in Vietnam. So I lived with my uncle almost twelve years, in the presbytery, in the church. That make me feel, you know, God’s calling me to follow his vocation to the priesthood. Well, I think in this seminary there’s a very healthy mix of affirmation and challenge. And it’s always in this spirit of what’s good for you as a seminarian, and also what’s going to be good for the parishes. I’ve just been in awe at the way the people open their lives to you in a way. And that’s always something that’s deeply impressed me because really the parishes are all about relationships, all about your connection to people. The fact that that starts here in the seminary is very helpful. Here we all train to become the priests to serve God and people. So I’m very grateful with the staff in the seminary. And I will never forget their work for me. And I feel them, they are like my family.
My friends and family, they really supported me. Especially when I come to Australia, it’s not really easy for me, many times I thought I may give up. But I can feel their prayers for me. Even my vocation to the priesthood is from them because they brought me to the church often, make me feel the presence of God in my life even sometimes I said to my mum, oh, why you took me to the church even I went there and I just sleep there? But my mom said, you know, you sleep in God’s hand better than you sleep at home. Friends and family are a tremendous support to you throughout the process. A priest told me before I entered, no matter what you will learn from this encounter, you will be stronger by the end of it. And I think if you go in with that sort of attitude of I am testing a vocation, that will take a bit of the pressure out of it and perhaps you’ll hear the voice of God a bit clearer in that. The priesthood makes present for the purposes of prayer, the apostolic ministry really. So I think of the priesthood, in a sense of, you know, uniting God’s people for prayer in the name of Christ that’s what I like to think of what I’m doing in ministry. Many saints they from the European or other country go to Vietnam to bring the Good News. But now I can see a lot of Vietnamese priests and people, now they bring the Good News to other countries again, it’s not end, it’s continue, and that’s why, you know, God is calling me and other younger ones to follow Christ. We don’t know where we going, we just follow Christ in our hearts. I know God’s present with me and I hope I can see God in my life. And I see God in my ministry and see God in other people.
I’ll just say, you know, pray for me this ordination. I’m not worthy with all this, but in God’s hand, God had chosen me. I feel very blessed from God and then also from people. Thank you so much for your prayers, I’m very humbled by it, consistently humbled by it, when I run into someone in a parish and they say, Oh, I know you from the calendar, I pray for you on this day. I just, it always gets me a little bit, always gets me a little bit. We haven’t done it of ourselves, but by many hands and the Holy Spirit behind it all. So thank you so much to everyone.