Peter Claver

St. Peter Claver, S.J., whose saint day is sept 9, was a Jesuit sent to Colombia in the late 16th century. He spent his time on the wharf, welcoming the ships and caring for the slaves being brought to South America. Can you imagine what the holds of those ships were like…and what condition many of the slave men, women and children were in? He found ways to “feed the hungry, find shelter for some, tend their wounds and bury their dead.” One of his verses is: “Seek God in all things and we shall find God by our side.” His life surely praised God. His wealth was in service to others. Peter Claver devoted great care to slaves just arriving in South America despite the social convention that did not consider them human. Claver first encountered Jesuits in Barcelona during his university studies. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1602 and studied philosophy on the island of Majorca at the college of Montesión whose doorkeeper, Brother Alphonsus Rodríguez, was already known for the holiness that would later be recognized by the Church when it canonized him. The saintly brother encouraged the young Jesuit's desire to do something great for God and suggested he consider being a missionary in the New World.

Claver offered himself for the missions, and the provincial sent him to Colombia in 1610. After he finished his study of theology in Bogotá, Claver went to Cartagena on the Caribbean coast where he was ordained a priest in 1616 and where he would spend the rest of his life ministering to slaves who arrived in that port from Africa. Cartagena was one of two Spanish ports designated to receive slaves; an estimated 10,000 of whom passed through the port each year during Claver's time. They were usually in horrible condition after the long voyage. Claver waited on the dock with food he had begged. Accompanied by former slaves who served as interpreters, the Spanish Jesuit then boarded the ships and greeted those on deck before descending into the ship's hold to care for the sick. He cleansed wounds, applied ointment and bandages and spoke about God. Slaves only remained in Cartegena for a few days, so Claver worked very quickly to prepare people for baptism. Instruction was necessarily limited, and Claver baptized a great number of slaves. He also visited hospitals, one of which cared for lepers, and saw Dutch and English prisoners of war. A plague struck Cartagena in 1650, and eventually took Claver as a victim after he had cared for others afflicted by the disease.

In the light of GC 35, we see Peter Claver as a great example of going to frontiers. He found God through his inner spirit to the poor and by obidence he cratively mind his mission, to the slaves. Mission and obidience, in GC 35, ask us to realize that the Creator and Lord in person communicates Himself to the devout soul in quest of divine will. God will not only lead a man to what He wants done, but will also inflame with His love and praise, and dispose it for the way in which could better serve, to the frontiers. Joe Tetlow, a spiritual director, wrote that the fullness of Jesuit spirituality leads a man to union with God-acting, and with God acting everywhere in the cosmos. So, the Jesuits is prepared to go anywhere at any time and to do anything within his capacity to do, going even to those physical and spiritual places which others do not reach or have diviculty in reaching. This union can come only with constant effort to know Him better, love Him more, and follow Him more closely.

Peter Claver as a man sent by God did his mission in a great obidience and a fully love to the needs. He became one with God through his prayers to take hand a very distracted people and became an opposition with the authority, the rich. He eased the slaves, cared to the sick, and ready to be not entrusted. In our mission, I think, we really do not need to quest our obidience but through obidience we become the hands of God in the frontiers.