Today we celebrate a beautiful saint by the name of Saint Peter Claver, who was born in 1580, in Verdu, Catalonia, Spain. He eventually entered the Jesuit order, and he gave himself to ministry.
In terms of the slaves—the slaves that would come to modern-day Colombia, back then called Cartagena—he had been sent to the main slave trading port of the Americas. He would remain there for over 40 years. At his ordination in 1616, he signed his vows with the words Petrus Claver aethiopum semper servus—Peter Claver, servant of the Africans forever.
He personally met slave ships as they arrived, bringing food, medicine, and comfort to the sick and the dying. He baptized an estimated 300,000 enslaved Africans and tirelessly defended their dignity against exploitation. He died in 1654 after years of illness and having been neglected by those around him. He was declared a saint in 1888 and the patron of missions to Africans.
What makes Saint Peter truly extraordinary, aside from him baptizing over 300,000 people, was his radical incarnation of Christ's compassion. While others treated the slaves as cargo, he saw in them the image of Christ crucified. He would descend into the foul holds of slave ships, embracing the sick and the dying, often covered in sores, and offering them both bodily care and the hope of Christ. This living witness is why he is called the “slave of the slaves forever.”
Now, in our readings, Saint Paul exhorts the community to be rooted in Christ and built upon him. And here is this man, Saint Peter, who saw that Christ himself did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at, but rather had emptied himself to assume the form of a human being. But not just that—he assumed the form of a slave. Saint Peter Claver saw this humble condescension of Christ into our midst, and imitated it by his self-giving to the slaves, becoming a servant to them.
Saint Paul's text speaks of Christ obliterating the bond against us, nailing it to the cross. Saint Peter Claver didn’t hold on to the prejudices and the biases. He saw the African slaves not as condemned, but as redeemed in Christ.
In the Psalm we read, The Lord is compassionate toward all his works. Saint Peter Claver embodied this in his very actions daily. And then in the Gospel, Jesus spends the night praying because he is about to choose the twelve whom he will send to be his presence in the world. Saint Peter Claver, too, was sent by God to these poor individuals, who only he knows how many times they felt abandoned. And yet Saint Peter Claver was God’s presence among them.
We’re told in the Gospel for today, “power came forth from Jesus and healed them all.” Saint Peter’s charity and Christ-like tenderness were channels of God’s healing for countless wounded souls.
Let us ask Saint Peter to pray for us so that we, too, can be God’s instrument of healing to those around us always. Amen.
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