Vincent Anh Xuan Vu
By Patrick Downes
Hawaii Catholic Herald
Vincent Anh Xuan Vu was child growing up in Vietnam when he first felt the tug of God’s call.
He said the “spark” of his priestly vocation was lit at age 7 when he kissed the ring of a visiting bishop at Christmas Eve Mass.
“I was inspired from that moment on,” Vu told the Hawaii Catholic Herald by phone last week.
His mother reinforced that flicker of a vocation by taking young Vu to daily Mass, a practice they continued after his parents, Vu Son Hung and Phuong Thi Nguyen, and their seven children moved in 2002 to Hawaii where his mother’s siblings lived.
In Hawaii, the family joined the Vietnamese Catholic Community at the Co-Cathedral of St. Theresa where they participated in various ministries. Vu gravitated toward youth ministry, and became a youth leader and teacher.
Vu said his call to priesthood was renewed and reinforced when he became an altar server as a sophomore and junior in high school. He attended Radford in Honolulu.
After his junior year he sought out the direction of the diocesan director of vocations, Father Peter Dumag, which led, after graduating in 2008, to his enrollment at Mount Angel College Seminary in Oregon.
“Every year I came back (from the seminary) with a sense of peace,” he said. “I was growing more mature, in faith and intellectually.”
Vu said that each year he completed at Mount Angel Seminary, confirmed that “sense of peace” and increased his confidence that he was following the right path.
He will take a big step forward on that path when Bishop Larry Silva ordains Vu a deacon, the last formal transition before priesthood for the Diocese of Honolulu, at 6 p.m., Dec. 28, in the Co-Cathedral of St. Theresa.
His parents share the “joy and happiness” he feels as the diaconate ordination date approaches. They will be presenting the offertory gifts at the ordination Mass.
All but one of his seven siblings will be present. His fraternal twin sister — together they are the youngest in the family — will do a Scripture reading.
After his diaconal ordination, Vu has one more semester of academics. He will then be ordained a priest, mostly likely in May at the close of the annual priests’ convocation, fulfilling the dream of a 7-year-old boy in Vietnam.