Category Archives: Culture

The Search For Freedom: A witness to Hope

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BOOK REVIEW: Fr Peter Hung’s journey from fugitive and refugee to the Priesthood

Basic military training is tough. Anyone who has been through it will testify to this. Recruits go through this to toughen them up so that they will defend their homeland without fear when they need to. The fittest among them are invited to undergo further training, which is the most punishing in the world, to become elite troopers.

Only about 30 percent of those who go through this demanding course ultimately earn the prestigious Special Forces badge. They are the ones who take on the riskiest operations, often behind enemy lines, to eliminate threats to their armed forces, countries and civilian population.

The armies of the world battle and defend against flesh and blood enemies. But the deadliest foes we face are not humans, but supernatural beings in the spiritual realm. It is a far more deadly battle that has eternal implications. It is a fight between the Army of God and the dark forces of Hell – Satan and his demons – for every human soul that God loves so deeply and wants to save from damnation.

To answer God’s call, Fr Peter had to leave his family in Vietnam

The formation of Christ’s priestly warrior

In this tussle between good and evil, God has formed and is continuously forming His Army in the visible world. Among them are elite warriors who go through extreme regimens to strengthen the human soul to withstand and counter the evillest attacks.

As I read and edited Fr Peter Hung’s book, The Search for Freedom, I can’t help but see the turmoil he went through on his journey to the priesthood along the lines of Special Forces training. In his case, God the Holy Spirit, as I see it, was forming him to be one of His elite spiritual warriors to save souls from the forces of Hell.

While God calls upon His Church Militant journeying in the world to holiness as weapons against the powers of darkness, some – lay, clergy and religious – are set aside to endure immense suffering for a special purpose. And it is my belief, Fr Peter is one of them.

His first encounter with turmoil came in the aftermath of the Communists’ takeover of Vietnam in 1975, when they prevented him from studying in the seminary to become a priest. To achieve their objective, the Communists forced Peter to join the ranks of their army to fight a war in Cambodia, which would have meant certain death for him.

The Search for Freedom tells his story of how through God’s Grace, he eventually managed to flee the Communists’ clutches and become a fugitive. Living alone in the jungles of Vietnam and hunted like an animal, he came to the point of despair and wished that death would visit him to end his torment.

But God was actually forming Peter to be resilient in his faith and spirit. He gave His priest-in-waiting the Grace to endure the unforgiving Vietnamese jungles before leading him out of the country in a rickety boat through a treacherous, stormy sea. It was a journey the young Peter and his fellow escapees were convinced would end in the sinking of the boat and their eventual death by drowning.

This, though, wasn’t in God’s plans for He guided the boat to its final destination – a camp for Vietnamese refugees on Pulau Bidong, which is an island off the north-western coast of Malaysia. There, Peter had to go through further trials as he had to see many of his compatriots find passage to third countries with ease because they had relatives living in those places.

He had no one living outside of Vietnam and faced a years-long wait in limbo. At Pulau Bidong, Peter’s faith was edging towards a cliff. He had almost given up all hope when after eight months on the island, Australian officials in 1982 offered him sanctuary in their country. It was a surprise development because Peter could not speak a word of English and not knowing anyone there, he would have had difficulty assimilating into Australian society.

I’ve known Fr Peter since he was a Redemptorist seminarian in Melbourne. His mentor and our family’s close friend, Father Patrick John O’Neill (1932-2007), reached out to us in the mid-1980s for this young seminarian to spend his vacation with us in Singapore as he was unable to return to Vietnam to visit his parents.

When Peter came to us, he hardly spoke a word of English, and all we knew then was that he was one of the original Vietnamese “Boat People” who fled the brutal Communist regime in his home country. Over time, he became part of our family, an adopted son of my parents and our brother.

It was only when Peter was able to converse fluently in English that we began to learn the horrors of what he went through as a seminarian in Vietnam.

Fr PJ O’Neill mentored Peter in his journey to the priesthood.

From wishing death to saving souls

That he went through extreme trials and tribulations is an understatement. I believe God did not permit him to go through this if it wasn’t to aid Fr Peter’s formation for greater things to serve His Will against the forces of evil.

Fr Peter has since earned a doctorate in moral theology and lectures on the subject. He also has an academic interest in human cloning and stem cell research, and has written a book, Advancing the Culture of Death: Euthanasia and Physician Assisted Suicide, from the perspective of the Catholic Church’s teachings.

In recalling his treacherous journey to the priesthood, Fr Peter says, “The journey to find God, that I have experienced in my life, has not been an easy one. There were times when I had fallen into a deadlock, with no way out, no hope, and I did not feel the presence of God in the darkness of life. At that time, I only wished that God would allow me to die in peace, so that I could be united with Him in heaven.

“Death for me at that time would help me to release my own sufferings, which I was constantly facing every day during that time, while I was a fugitive. Since living without freedom, without future, without education and without being able to live together with your loved ones in the family, life can be meaningless and boring. One may wish to stop living. Probably in such situations, sometimes death could be the better option and that thought flashed through my mind.”

This book also offers glimpses of his life after he was ordained priest, as he shares how he was drawn closer to Jesus Christ through the love of His Blessed Virgin Mother. We learn that through all his trials and tribulations, even as a priest, how the Holy Spirit has been at work forming him to follow God’s Will to be a disciple of Christ. He has faithfully answered the Saviour’s Great Commission to spread His Gospel and lead all people to God in His offer of Salvation to eternal life, and the book, The Search for Freedom, is part of his mission.

Fr Peter is God the Father’s Special Forces spiritual warrior in the Militant Church: to strengthen believers in their faith in Him and for unbelievers to find Him in Jesus Christ.

He is a witness to hope for people who toil under the weight of trials and tribulations that if they endure, the Holy Spirit will transform them into spiritual warriors according to His Will, which ultimately leads to abundant joy in heavenly riches.

Fr Peter’s book, The Search for Freedom, is available at Amazon

Culture: Seeing Christ in the games we play

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Hero of world’s most popular computer game has a Messiah-like character

Although many of us despair about secular media, sometimes they contain elements that prompt us to reflect on our Catholic faith. This includes video games.

This is the case with Thoma, a playable character in the world’s most popular computer game to date, Genshin Impact. The name of the game is Japanese, but the producer is Chinese. “Genshin” translated into English means “The Original Deity”.

Thoma has two key designations that describe his prowess as a hero. The first, Blazing Defence, is the firepower that he has been given to fight monsters, and connected with his in-game skill, Blazing Blessing. The second, Protector from Afar, is about the game’s main storyline.

He is a foreigner who has been accepted as the servant of an heiress to one of the three great clans who rule the country. He is gentle and unassuming, but yet assertive. The first time a player and the character meets, Thoma helps him get a visa to enter the closed country. But he soon discovers his official position is the housekeeper for the heiress. He also runs errands for his mistress. These “errands” include trade negotiations, breaking up gang fights and investigating espionage. Not your average grocery shopper.

Thoma is not a perfect analogy, but in certain key aspects, he resembles Christ.

In-game, while he is among the best of the characters, his storyline shows that the most impressive thing he manages to do for the people at court is to conduct a housekeeping class for them. This recalls the story in the Gospels about Christ not being able to do any miracles in Nazareth because nobody believed He was the Messiah. They refused to call him anything other than “son of the carpenter”. Admittedly, a carpenter in the time of Christ was still more prestigious than a housekeeper, but they were not part of the learned classes like the Levites and Scribes.

Both Christ and Thoma share similar experiences of being under-appreciated because of who they appear to be. Thoma also suffers double because he is a foreigner. Our analogy here can remind us that we are called to be “in this world, but not of this world”.

Despite the abuse that he receives at the hands of the courtiers, he is still affable and kind towards them, telling the player that they are just the way they are as courtiers. When he gets angry, it is at the real ruffians and the monsters. Christ is also forgiving and merciful, even to the soldiers who arrest him. When Peter cuts off the ears of the high priest’s servant in the arresting party, Christ heals his ears. Of course, Christ goes several steps ahead of Thoma in that He eventually sacrifices his life for the salvation of all mankind on Good Friday.

Thoma possesses fire-element powers in the game. His normal skill is a lunging attack with a flaming spear. His second ability is an offensive-and-defensive fire power called “blazing blessing” which deals fire damage to enemies and creates a flaming barrier around him and his friends.

Fire is a potent image in the Scriptures. In the Old Testament, a pillar of fire leads the Israelites out of Egypt. God also shames the prophets of Baal with fire from Heaven. Christ brings a different sort of fire to the mix – a fire of the heart. The Holy Spirit that descends on the Apostles on Pentecost is described as tongues of fire in the Book of Acts.

There are also a few times when Christ is associated with strong lights or burning fire. In the Book of Revelations, John sees Christ standing with “eyes like a fiery flame” and “feet like polished brass in a furnace”. Earlier on in the Gospels, Christ appears with a burning visage during the Transfiguration.

So, He effectively dispenses “blazing blessings” to all of us.

The depiction “Protector From Afar” is ironic when applied to Thoma. Usually when one thinks of someone being “afar”, it is of someone who has cut off contact with all people and maybe lives in a monastery or somewhere similar. But Thoma is exactly the opposite. Everybody in the neighbourhood knows him and recognizes his face. However, they don’t know that he is also the legendary “Fixer”. In that sense, he is “afar” from everyone.

Similarly, Christ’s other name is “Emmanuel” or “God is With Us”, yet many times we feel He is far away and fails to recognize His presence in the people around us. He is also “afar” in another way. As the Second Person of the Trinity, He watches us from a context bigger than the 3D setting of our daily routines. He is able to work wonders in our lives because He has more resources than we can imagine.

The final similarity between Thoma and Christ, though, will probably be the most unique. It is also the one that inspired this article.

In Thoma’s quest, he brings the player to a tree in the middle of town where he feeds stray puppies every morning. He has developed a very close bond with the animals to the point of giving each of them names. In addition, he has not merely invited the player to feed the puppies but to also help knit sweaters for each of them, whom he loves. What is even more amazing is that he is the one who gathered all the puppies to the tree in the first place from different corners of the city!

Are you able to guess the analogy here? If you can’t, it is probably because the puppies are a distraction. (Boy, are they adorable!)

This aspect of Thoma dovetails very well with the parable of the Good Shepherd. Like Thoma, Christ as the Good Shepherd goes around the country seeking out the lost sheep and gathering them back into the sheepfold. However, thinking about Thoma’s tree, we could have another insight. While it is commonplace to believe that the Shepherd has one sheepfold, perhaps what the Shepherd really does is gather the lost sheep into many Sheepfolds all under His ownership.

This ties in with the doctrine of subsidiarity in the Catholic Church, where every local Church is the Church of Christ by itself and is not part of another local Church, including the Church of Rome. So, in that way there are many Churches but also just one Church. And all are the same in that they have Christ as their Shepherd!

So, if you are Genshin Impact player or have children who play the game, you can use Thoma as a weak cipher of Christ.