During his life, he reported receiving locutions and visions from Thérèse of Lisieux, Jesus Christ, and the Blessed Virgin Mary.
He died in a North Vietnam internment camp, and his cause for beatification was opened in 1997 by archbishop Nguyễn Văn Thuận.
[1] Born to a devout Catholic family in Ngam Giao, a village in northern Vietnam, Van was baptized under the patronage of Saint Joachim.
When his sister Anne-Marie Tê was born in 1932, his family sent him to live with his aunt, since they considered his excessive displays of affection dangerous for the newborn child.
He tormented Van severely, allowing him to receive Holy communion only on days when he agreed to be beaten, depriving him of food, and preventing him from reciting his rosary.
[6] In 1936, when Van was eight, two typhoons struck the region in quick succession, causing famine and destroying his family's farm.
But this time, he started with the other boys a resistance league to improve the spiritual poverty that had settled there, and encourage each other in the practice of virtue.
[13] Van then continued his studies at the rectory of St. Thérèse's parish in Qang Uyên, under Maillet, a Dominican missionary.
[13] In the summer of 1942, it was there that he discovered Therese of Lisieux's autobiography, the Story of a Soul, which was a turning point in his spiritual life.
A short time afterwards, Van recounted having receiving the great grace of having Therese appear to him and speak with him familiarly, and that this occurred on a regular basis for a period.
[14] According to Van, she personally taught him her "little way," and asked him to pray for the French, whom he had previously disliked due to their colonisation of Vietnam.
[15] Upon reading a Redemptorist publication he felt the desire to join the order, and he recounted a little later that Therese also encouraged him in this vocation.
This being one of a string of misunderstandings, and thinking that Van was being stubborn and prideful, Maillet drove him away for the minor seminary in June 1943.
[18] He arrived on July 16, but was sent home due to his small size, since the religious brothers had a heavy work load.
[21] At the request of the novice master, Van wrote the story of his childhood, as well as his conversations with Jesus, Mary and Therese.
After initial difficulties, notably due to his young age and small size, he eventually became an exemplary religious.
While many Christians were fleeing to seek refuge in South Vietnam, Marcel Van asked to return to the north which had become communist.
Marcel Van’s spirituality was heavily influenced by Therese of Lisieux’s “Little Way,” as well as by Alphonsus Liguori, the founder of the Redemptorist order.
Of a joyful and playful nature, he is a model of intense faith lived in simplicity, humility and trust in God.
While he reminds the reader that it is the church’s prerogative to authenticate such happenings, he states that: “The message that little Van transmits to us is of a theological and spiritual accuracy which far surpasses his own intellectual knowledge.”[24] Summarizing the general message of the Conversations, Schönborn says that what is “at the heart of little Van’s experience and message: his unbounded confidence in Him who is Love.” [25] In the Conversations, Marcel Van affirms that Jesus Christ gave some clues as to the solution of the ancient Catholic debate on the topic of unbaptized children: "JESUS: Remember this well.
Boucher wrote about the Conversations: "When reading the text, I felt that this very little brother whom Jesus, Mary and Therese guided by the hand, would have a role to play in the Church and in the world.