9 September 2020 - St Peter Claver - Wednesday of the 23rd week of Ordinary Time - Luke 6:20-26

      Today, we hear Luke’s version account of the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Plains.  While Matthew states that blessed are the poor in spirit, the meek, and those who mourn, Luke states that blessed are the poor, the hungry, and those who weep.  Luke’s beatitudes speak to the poor and the oppressed and the marginalized of the world.  It would have spoken to the people of St Peter Claver’s world as he arrived in the Spanish colonies in South America in the early 17th century.  Peter Claver was born to a prosperous family of farmers in the small village of Verdú in the region of Catalonia,  Spain in 1580, almost one hundred years after the birth of Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits. As a member of the Jesuits, he traveled to the port city of Cartegena, Colombia, where he was ordained a priest five years later.  He took up the work of his predecesor, Jesuit priest Alfonso de Sandoval.  His principal ministry was to minister to the many slaves who arrived in this port city from Africa.   In his 40 years in Colombia, it is estimated that he baptized more than 300,000 of these slaves.  Pope Leo XIII canonized Peter Claver in 1888.   Three years later, Leo XIII issued the ground breaking encyclical Rerum Novarum, a courageous statement on social justice and compassion and solidarity with the poor and oppressed of the world in the midst of the industrial revolution.  At the heart of it, the poor of the world of Leo XIII of the late 19th century needed the same message of Christ’s Good News of liberation and human dignity as the Africans arriving in South America as slaves almost four hundred years earlier.  You can imagine, Peter Claver’s work with the slaves was not popular with the governmental authorities in Cartegena.  Yet, at the time of his death, those same political figures honored him with respect and honor.  In every era, there are conditions of injustice and division that need to be addressed.  The feast day of Peter Claver calls us to address those injustices and divisions that exist in our society today.