9/9/2015 – Wednesday of the 23rd week in Ordinary Time – Colossians 3:1-11

     We hear a reading from Paul’s letter to the Colossians today, a letter that was probably written near the end of Paul’s first period of incarceration in Rome.  Paul asks the Colossians to think about the ideals of our faith that come from God, not just of what is here on earth.  We are to give up our earthly attachments to the world.   Indeed, we live in this world, but we are not of this world.  We are to live according to the values and norms that God gives us.  The saint today is one of those marvelous saints that gives me so much encouragement and inspiration in the way he lived out his faith as a missionary to some of the most marginalized and oppressed people of his era.  Peter Claver was born into a devoutly Catholic and prosperous farming family in Catalonia in Spain in 1581.  He entered the Society of Jesus – the Jesuits – at the age of 20.  Claver volunteered to be a missionary in the Spanish colonies in South America, arriving at the port city of Cartagena, Columbia in 1610.  More than 10,000 slaves a year entered this port city from West Africa, of which more than a third died from the harsh conditions they endured.  Claver’s ministry was directed to these slaves.  In his work there for more than 40 years, it is estimated that he baptized more than 300,000 souls.   Not only did he try to minister to them on a spiritual level, but he offered them food and drink and treated their wounds. His ministry encountered great opposition from many of those in power in Cartagena, many of whom got rich from the slave trade. Claver was stricken by the plague and died several years later after enduring that terrible affliction.  Pope Leo XIII canonized Peter Claver in 1888.   Leo himself was a great champion of Catholic social teaching, having written the encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891, considered a ground breaking document in Catholic social justice.  Claver is one of the patrons of social justice.  The Lord calls us to infuse our world with the values of faith just like Peter Claver did through his life and ministry.  Let us be open to that invitation.