September 9
St. Peter Claver
Life (1580-1654)
The Americas, where St. Peter Claver worked and died as a Jesuit missionary, should be grateful to God for the gift of this truly great servant of the black slaves.
Claver, a native of Catalonia in Spain, early opted for the secular priesthood. In 1602, however, having graduated from the University of Barcelona, he applied for entrance into the Society of Jesus. His assignment to teach at the Jesuit college in Palma, Majorca, was providential, for there he fell under the influence of the holy Jesuit lay brother Alfonso Rodriguez. It was Rodriguez who persuaded Peter to ask for assignment to Spanish America, where there was dire need for missionaries.
Claver so asked, and in 1610 his request was granted. After a long voyage, he landed in Cartagena, South America, in the present republic of Colombia. There he was ordained a priest in 1615; and there he would spend the rest of his apostolic life.
Cartagena was a leading Caribbean shipping center. It was especially important as a clearing-house for black slaves. These poor people, purchased by slave traders in West Africa at four crowns apiece, would fetch 200 crowns apiece in the Cartagena market. They were treated as chattels by the slavers, who packed them like sardines into the filthy holds of slave ships. Those who managed to survive the trip landed in the slave corrals, scared, friendless, and stinking with disease.
There was already one Jesuit in Colombia dedicated to helping these sorry thousands: Fr. Alfonso de Sandoval. Claver, working under Sandoval at the start, adopted the same apostolate. He resolved to become “the slave of the Negroes forever.”
The missionary work he now undertook was by no means sentimental or haphazard. He carefully organized a group of paid assistants, whom he took with him to meet each newly arrived slave ship. They plunged in among this frightened, sickly throng of human beings with friendly gestures, food and medicines. (“We must speak to them with our hands.” said Fr. Peter, “before we try to speak to them with our lips.”) The dying and the little ship-born babies he baptized at once.
Until each shipment of slaves was scattered, Claver and his associates continued to take care of their physical needs, and many were cured by his medicines and by his prayers. But he also taught them the elements of the faith in a systematic manner. By means of pictures and through interpreters cognizant of the African languages, he conveyed to them the basic notions of God and the redemption. He made a special effort to convince them that God loved them, and that as redeemed human beings they were men of dignity and worth. In the 40 years of his service to them, St. Peter is estimated to have baptized 300,000 black slaves.
Slave owners in Spanish America were somewhat less barbarous than those in English Jamaica. Spanish law at least recognized the marriages of slaves and forbade the breakup of their families and the re-enslavement of freedmen. Nevertheless, Claver also made the slaveholders a part of his apostolate, for they had to be reminded of their conscientious duties to the slaves. The saint likewise approached the Protestant traders at the port, as well as traveling Moors and Turks, and even succeeded in converting a number of these. In his spare time, he ministered effectively to the criminals in death row and preached missions among the black slaves in outlying districts.
This apostolic effort, founded on a personal life of constant prayer and strict penance, came to a halt in 1650. Then the missionary, stricken by plague, became disabled, forgotten and even slandered by the fellow citizens who had earlier admired him. His only helper was a cranky young black man who treated him badly.
Finally, however, Father Peter drew near to death in September 1654. When his condition became known, the Cartagenans suddenly remembered “the saint”, came to ask his last blessing, and even to snatch a “relic” from his cell. He died on September 8, and the city government gave him a splendid funeral. The Indians and Blacks had a special Mass offered for him. Thereafter Peter Claver was to remain the proud boast of his adopted city.
In 1888 Pope Leo XII canonized both Peter and Alfonso Rodriguez in the same ceremony, and named St. Peter patron of all missions among the Blacks throughout the world. His feast has long been celebrated in the United States by white and black Catholics alike. --Father Robert F. McNamara
Scripture (Isaiah 58:6-11)
(Year B). From time immemorial, different societies have known the phenomenon of man’s subjugation by man. There have been periods of human history in which the institution of slavery was generally accepted and regulated by law. This legislation dictated who was born free and who was born into slavery, as well as the conditions whereby a freeborn person could lose his or her freedom or regain it. In other words, the law itself admitted that some people were able or required to be considered the property of other people, at their free disposition. A slave could be bought and sold, given away or acquired, as if he or she were a commercial product.
Today, as the result of a growth in our awareness, slavery, seen as a crime against humanity, has been formally abolished throughout the world. The right of each person not to be kept in a state of slavery or servitude has been recognized in international law as inviolable. Yet, even though the international community has adopted numerous agreements aimed at ending slavery in all its forms, and has launched various strategies to combat this phenomenon, millions of people today – children, women and men of all ages – are deprived of freedom and are forced to live in conditions akin to slavery.
I think of the many men and women labourers, including minors, subjugated in different sectors, whether formally or informally, in domestic or agricultural workplaces, or in the manufacturing or mining industry; whether in countries where labour regulations fail to comply with international norms and minimum standards, or, equally illegally, in countries which lack legal protection for workers’ rights.
I think also of the living conditions of many migrants who, in their dramatic odyssey, experience hunger, are deprived of freedom, robbed of their possessions, or undergo physical and sexual abuse. In a particular way, I think of those among them who, upon arriving at their destination after a gruelling journey marked by fear and insecurity, are detained in at times inhumane conditions. I think of those among them, who for different social, political and economic reasons, are forced to live clandestinely. My thoughts also turn to those who, in order to remain within the law, agree to disgraceful living and working conditions, especially in those cases where the laws of a nation create or permit a structural dependency of migrant workers on their employers, as, for example, when the legality of their residency is made dependent on their labour contract. Yes, I am thinking of “slave labour”.
I think also of persons forced into prostitution, many of whom are minors, as well as male and female sex slaves. I think of women forced into marriage, those sold for arranged marriages and those bequeathed to relatives of their deceased husbands, without any right to give or withhold their consent.
Nor can I fail to think of all those persons, minors and adults alike, who are made objects of trafficking for the sale of organs, for recruitment as soldiers, for begging, for illegal activities such as the production and sale of narcotics, or for disguised forms of cross-border adoption.
Finally, I think of all those kidnapped and held captive by terrorist groups, subjected to their purposes as combatants, or, above all in the case of young girls and women, to be used as sex slaves. Many of these disappear, while others are sold several times over, tortured, mutilated or killed. Today, as in the past, slavery is rooted in a notion of the human person which allows him or her to be treated as an object. Whenever sin corrupts the human heart and distances us from our Creator and our neighbours, the latter are no longer regarded as beings of equal dignity, as brothers or sisters sharing a common humanity, but rather as objects. Whether by coercion or deception, or by physical or psychological duress, human persons created in the image and likeness of God are deprived of their freedom, sold and reduced to being the property of others. They are treated as means to an end.
Alongside this deeper cause – the rejection of another person’s humanity – there are other causes which help to explain contemporary forms of slavery. Among these, I think in the first place of poverty, underdevelopment and exclusion, especially when combined with a lack of access to education or scarce, even non-existent, employment opportunities. Not infrequently, the victims of human trafficking and slavery are people who look for a way out of a situation of extreme poverty; taken in by false promises of employment, they often end up in the hands of criminal networks which organize human trafficking. These networks are skilled in using modern means of communication as a way of luring young men and women in various parts of the world.
Another cause of slavery is corruption on the part of people willing to do anything for financial gain. Slave labour and human trafficking often require the complicity of intermediaries, be they law enforcement personnel, state officials, or civil and military institutions. “This occurs when money, and not the human person, is at the centre of an economic system. Yes, the person, made in the image of God and charged with dominion over all creation, must be at the centre of every social or economic system. When the person is replaced by mammon, a subversion of values occurs”.
Further causes of slavery include armed conflicts, violence, criminal activity and terrorism. Many people are kidnapped in order to be sold, enlisted as combatants, or sexually exploited, while others are forced to emigrate, leaving everything behind: their country, home, property, and even members of their family. They are driven to seek an alternative to these terrible conditions even at the risk of their personal dignity and their very lives; they risk being drawn into that vicious circle which makes them prey to misery, corruption and their baneful consequences. (Pope Francis; Message for the World Day of Peace, January 1, 2015)
Musical Selection
O I couldn’t hear nobody pray,
O I couldn’t hear nobody pray,
Way down yonder by myself,
O I couldn’t hear nobody pray.
In the valley,
O I couldn’t hear nobody pray,
On my knees,
O I couldn’t hear nobody pray,
With my burden,
O I couldn’t hear nobody pray,
And my Savior,
O I couldn’t hear nobody pray,
O my Lord!
Collect
O God,
you made Saint Peter Claver a slave of the slaves
and strengthened him with marvellous and patient love in their service.
Grant through his intercession
that we may seek the things that are of Christ,
and love our neighbour both in deed and in truth.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God for ever and ever. Amen. (ICEL; 1998)