Entry for November 29, 2010

Less than an hour away from departing Dalat, the second leg of our Asian journey.  It's been a most enjoyable and instructive time.  The enjoyable part begins with the climate which, on account of its elevation, is much cooler than Saigon.  It's a city built along the slopes of a mountain - before 1975 in a manner that respected the natural beauty of its setting, after 1975 in a more careless and haphazard way.   A heavy dose of sadness has been a companion these days, especially in viewing what was done to Dinh's family home here, but overall in the culture-destroying depredations of the regime. Call it the "shabbification" of a lovely city.   I recall the rhetoric in the mid-seventies in the US along the lines of "our long nightmare being over".     For the South Vietnamese it was just beginning, and the consequences for the Church and for the society at large have been devastating.   Since the early 1990's, ideology has given way to maintaining power and riches, and to that end there has been a loosening of the reins.  University students still spend at least half of the first two years studying the history of communism and other fascinating anacronisms, but the standard joke is that Ho Chi Minh is mostly known as the face of the currency.

The year 2010 marks the bicentennial of the birth of Father Emmanuel d’Alzon, founder of the Augustinians of the Assumption, who sponsor Assumption College.

In order to commemorate this anniversary, Assumption College recently sponsored a pilgrimage to the various sites associated with the life and work of Father d’Alzon.  Walking “In the Footsteps of d’Alzon,” the 24 pilgrims, including alumni, trustees, students, former faculty and friends of the College, made their way to Paris, Nimes and Rome, not as tourists, but as pilgrims with hearts open to discovering who this man was who inspired so many men and women in his day, and continues to do so, through the apostolates sponsored by the  Assumptionists throughout the world and the extended Assumptionist family.

Sunday has  come and gone and these lines will let you know what went on...

I went to bed very late; actually it was very early in the  morning after what I described in my last diary entry concerning the very special tour of my SWEET HOME here at the seminary. It took place in the darkness of the tropical night. The tour in which I was the tourist guide and the only one who registered for the tour. It began a few hours after a conversation we had during a late supper and ended before just before dawn. I woke up “very early in the morning of the same day” and realized that my eyes had been closed for only an hour and 23 minutes.

PROGRESS OR ADVENT?

Here in the early 21st century we’re still a good deal more inclined to think in terms of “Progress” rather than in terms of “Advent.”  Despite the terrible experiences of the 20th century that ought to have sobered us up a bit, we still want to see ourselves as engaged in the great civilizational project of making the world “better”… by which we mean making ourselves more secure and comfortable as we build, restlessly, the vast social and technological systems we rely on now for just about everything.  John Locke, the English political thinker said it a long time ago:  our goal would be “comfortable self-preservation.”  It’s a low goal but one about which most people can agree and make “progress” toward it more or less, on into the future…so long as we don’t pause to think too much about it.