The Lord is My shepherd

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.
 
The fallen foliage softened the shuffle of their footsteps, a mass exodus of people starting out before sunrise, hoping to find freedom from religious and ethnic persecution. Among them, James Vinh Le, then in his mid-20s, hoped to reach safety in Thailand, to escape from years of being persecuted for his Catholic faith, to finally become a priest.
 
Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff — they comfort me.
 
He took each step carefully, never knowing where the hidden land mines could be, never knowing if the next step would be his last. A deep breath in, a deep breath out; one step, then another. He prayed all the while, sometimes singing Psalm 23, sometimes simply praying aloud. The faces around him bore the familiar look of fear, hunger and fatigue. Would they all make it to safety before nightfall? Night in the Cambodian jungle was not a safe place to be. Suddenly, gunfire so loud it reverberated in his chest filled the air as bandits attempted to rob some of the travelers. They scattered. He prayed harder and louder, running as fast as his emaciated body could carry him. After a while, he slowed and realized he’d lost the path to Thailand.
 
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.
 
Where the jungle had been alive with the sounds of shuffling feet and hushed conversations, this area now held an eerie quiet. His ears searched for any signs of others, eventually pinging on voices that gently guided him back to the path. He reached the refugee area in Thailand shortly before nightfall. But his journey to the priesthood had barely begun.
 
Three seminaries, four languages, 18 years
 
Father James “Jim” Vinh Le was born to Vietnamese natives living in Cambodia under a French regime. His mother was Catholic and his father converted when they were married; Father Jim attended parochial schools and it was the inspiration of a visiting French monk and the prayerful guidance of the nuns at his school that led him to pursue a priestly vocation.
 
When he was in eighth grade, Father Jim began attending a minor seminary where all classes were taught in French. The next year, politics in Cambodia changed and his seminary classes were taught in Cambodian. When he was around 17 years old, a revolution hit Cambodia and all Vietnamese natives were deported, including Father Jim’s family. During all this turmoil, he began to question whether he was really being called to the priesthood.
 
After he and his family settled in Vietnam, he connected with missionaries who helped pay for him to attend a new seminary, this time classes were conducted in Vietnamese.
 
While in Vietnam, he finished minor and began major seminary. However, in 1975, when he was just 21, South Vietnam fell to a communist takeover. The government shut down all the seminaries and began persecuting the Catholic faithful, along with many other religions. Catholics could only practice their faith in hiding. Father Jim finished major seminary underground but was unable to be ordained.
 
The Communist regime refused to grant citizens documentation, which prevented them from legally moving from town to town in the country. For many years, Father Jim tried to escape by boat but was never successful. Finally, he was able to escape back to Cambodia by land, only to be captured and thrown into prison.
 
The prison conditions were horrific: three months and 10 days in a small, dark cell with 7-8 other people and no window. The space was very hot, with limited fresh air, little water and barely any food. Father Jim knew he would not survive long in that cell. After a few weeks, he convinced his captors to move him to a larger cell; and shortly thereafter, he volunteered to help paint the outside of the building. They were concealing the prison under the guise of a police office for the city and wanted to keep the building well-maintained. After almost six months in prison, he escaped and ran toward the Cambodian jungle and Thailand.
 
His journey to freedom took him through an area of Cambodia known as “the killing fields” — areas where the Communist regime had detained, tortured and killed hundreds of thousands of people. In total, during the reign of Pol Pot from 1975 to 1979, an estimated 1.5 million to 2 million Cambodians died.
 
While in the refugee camp in Thailand, prisoners were not allowed to practice organized religion, but for Father Jim, meditating on Psalm 23 continued to be his source of great hope and strength.
 
 “I kept praying Psalm 23 when I was in the camp because a lot of people in there had lost their hope. All the other countries had closed their borders to us. We had nowhere else to go.”
 
While Father Jim was able to have contact with an American priest, they were not allowed to worship or exchange notes or items. An American doctor with Doctors Without Borders, however, had unsupervised contact with the priest outside the walls of the camp. Because he knew so many languages, Father Jim became the doctor’s translator and was able to convince her to meet with the priest outside the camp and smuggle the Eucharist into the camp, even though she and Father Jim would have endured harsh punishment if she were ever caught. Twice a week, small groups of five to six Catholics would gather with Father Jim and he would offer them communion by candlelight in secret.
 
By the time Father Jim had reached Thailand at age 27, he had come up against so many obstacles — changing languages and seminaries, prison and the long journey through the mine fields, losing his mother while he was in seminary, losing his father while in the refugee camp — that he often found himself feeling like the prophet Jeremiah.
 
“Every time I struggled, I would pray to God. Sometimes I felt mad and upset and frustrated and I would express myself like the prophet Jeremiah — ‘God you duped me and I let myself be duped by you,’” he recalls. “Because it seems I pray and I would get a little better but then another obstacle would happen again and I would think, ‘Well, maybe I am not supposed to be a priest.’”
 
After several years, the security threat around the borders of Cambodia and Thailand eased enough that other countries began to allow refugees again. Father Jim was able to travel to the United States by way of a transit camp in the Philippines.
 
“I had contact with an American priest in the Diocese of Grand Rapids, Msgr. Herman Zerfas. He introduced me to Bishop Paul V. Donovan, who accepted me as a seminarian for the Diocese of Kalamazoo. I needed to study English and the bishop decided the best way to do that was in the seminary, so he sent me to the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio.”
 
Father Jim was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Kalamazoo on June 27, 1987. In total, his journey through seminary to the priesthood entailed four languages, three seminaries and 18 years.
 
“I felt called to focus my vocation, my priesthood, around the Prayer of St. Francis, Make me an instrument of God’s peace, simple, humble, to serve,” he says. “Your way, not my way — your thoughts, not my thoughts.”
 
This included serving others and going wherever there is need.
 
One such need that has stayed vivid in his memory was a night while serving at a rural parish. He received a call that a woman was near death. He went to the nursing home to pray over her and anoint her when he was told her family would not reach her in time. While he could have returned home, he felt called to stay and not leave her to die alone.
 
“On the way home, I remembered the Prayer of St. Francis,” he recalls. “And it really touched me. I was able to bring the peace of God to her and to her family, letting them know that even though they couldn’t make it in time, she was not alone.”