Today, we commemorate St Peter Claver, one of the great missionaries of the Christian faith from the 17th century. A Spaniard by birth, Claver left his home country of Spain in 1610 to become a missionary to the Spanish colonies in the Americas and he never turned back. He arrived in the busy trading port of Cartagena in the present-day country of Colombia. He was ordained a Jesuit priest there in Cartagena in 1615. By the time of his arrival, the slave trade had already been established there. He continued the work of another Jesuit priest, Father Alfonso de Sandoval, who had ministered to the slaves there for 40 years before Peter Claver undertook this same ministry. Claver would meet the slave ships and bring them things like medicine, food, and water. In 40 years of ministry, it is estimated that he baptized at least 300,000 slaves into the faith. After 4 years of battling a debilitating illness, Peter Claver died in 1654. Though he often clashed with the governmental authorities in the Spanish colonies during his lifetime, he was given great respect in his public funeral. He was canonized in 1888 and was declared a patron saint of the missions. Peter Claver once said, “We must speak to the peopl with our hands, by giving, before we try to speak to them with our lips.” Yes, our actions often say more than our words.
Today, we hear Luke’s version account of the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Plains. While the version of the Beatitudes from Matthew’s Gospel 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, the oppressed, and the marginalized of the world, which was the everyday world of St Peter Claver. May we remember the Beatitudes in our hearts and reflect the Beatitudes in our actions.
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