9 September 2020
Today is the Memorial of St. Peter Claver, a fearless Spanish Jesuit Missionary whose life should be a model for all of us and the Church. Claver was born in Catalonia, Spain in 1580. Little is known of his younger years except that he had already decided he wanted to be a priest by age 13. At 16 he began studies at the University of Barcelona, where he met the Society of Jesus for the first time. He entered the Society in August 1602 and pronounced first vows two years later.
Claver’s spiritual director was Jesuit Brother St. Alphonsus Rodriguez whom we will celebrate at the end of October. In response to Claver’s desire to do great things for God, Rodriguez suggested that he consider going to the New World where there was much to be done. Claver arrived in Cartagena, Colombia in the summer of 1610 after a six-month voyage. He completed his theological studies in Bogota and was ordained a priest in 1616. Describing Claver’s work over the next 35 years as extraordinary is an understatement. He ministered to what one historian described as “the world’s most unfortunate creatures,” the men and women brought to Cartagena from Africa to be sold as slaves.
His way of proceding was to board a slave ship as soon as it arrived in port, giving whatever biscuits and fruit he could beg from the townspeople to those on deck. He then went below deck to minister to the sick and dying where, despite the stench, Peter remained for as long as it took to care for the sick and baptize the dying. He instructed the slaves in the Catholic faith and baptized them. His biographer notes, “These baptisms were so numerous that in response to a Jesuit brother’s question about the number of baptisms he performed in Cartagena, Peter humbly answered, “a little over 300,000.”
He never left Cartagena. He never took a vacation. After more than three decades ministering to the most deprived, neglected, and ill-treated in the world he developed Parkinson's disease, becoming a bed-bound invalid for the last four years of his life, a time during which he was severely abused by a former slave who was hired to care for him. He accepted the mistreatment without complaint seeing it as just punishment for his sins. He died on September 8, 1654, was beatified in 1851. and canonized on January 15, 1888, in the same ceremony as his spiritual director St. Alphonsus Rodriguez.
Peter Claver heard Jesus' call to give up everything to follow Jesus, serving others despite the risk of diseases that were considerably worse than covid-19. That he did so is cause for rejoicing and imitation.
______________________________________________________________________
The first is a bridal shop in Ljubljana.
No comments:
Post a Comment