By Leon Bent –
St. Peter Claver was a Spanish Jesuit missionary who worked in Latin America. He is known as the “Apostle of the West Indies” and the “Slave to the Slaves.” His feast is celebrated on September 9.
Peter entered the Society of Jesus in 1602 and eight years later, was sent to Cartagena, where he was ordained in 1616. On making his vows of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience, he added a fourth heroic one: to become a “slave of the slaves”. He was all theirs. For this reason, his confessional was reserved for them.
From the very first day he showed himself determined to become a saint and a missionary. In his diary, he wrote: “I want to spend my whole life working to save souls and to die for them.”
The miserable condition of the slaves aboard ships and in the pens of Cartagena caused Peter to declare himself, “the slave of the Negroes forever”.
Today, it is hard to assess the heroism of this apostolate. The black peoples were very primitive and lived in deep moral degradation and moral perversion, in addition to their brutal passions. They were transported to the ‘New World’ by ship in sub-human conditions, like beasts. Moreover, some of them would contract diseases while travelling and were covered with wounds and bad odour. One can understand their bitter and suspicious mood as they arrived.
Amid stench, unbearable heat and unspeakable promiscuity, the saint rendered services most repugnant to human nature, with love, patience and the charity of a real mother.
The immodesty of feminine attire was one of the disorders that afflicted him the most. And this in the seventeenth century, an epoch of long dresses! What would he say of today’s semi-nudity, often even in the house of God?
Although the practice of slave-trading was condemned by Pope Paul III and later labelled “supreme villainy” by Pope Pius IX, and some other Popes, it continued to flourish.
By a kind of divine charisma he had a supernatural knowledge, of the danger his ‘blacks’ would run, in their agony, and the fate of their souls after death.
He was solicitous not only with blacks but with everyone in great danger of body or soul. He took a particular interest in those condemned to death; he would prepare them and accompany them to the place of execution.
Claver knew that the blacks needed a voice to ease their burden, not to make it heavier with bitterness and anger. He couldn’t remove the cross but he could make it sweet. “You are better off being a slave in America than a chief in Africa,” he told them. Why? “Because,” he continued, “your sufferings have opened for you the gates of Paradise.” He turned their inevitable suffering into a cause for joy. These blacks had come from a depraved, idolatrous, and cruel civilization. They were sinners in need of repentance and divine mercy.
By far, the greatest damage the devil suffered from Father Claver was in the Confessional. He entered the Church at 3 o’clock in the morning. No time was too early for these faithful Cartagenians to unburden their souls to God. He stayed there in the Confessional until midday. Again at two o’clock he would return after a scanty mid-day meal and a meditation. In the afternoon hours he would hear Confessions of only the Negresses, and then, in the evening, beginning at six o’clock, he would devote himself strictly to the men.
He gradually became the father, comforter, nurse and evangelizer of the suffering people. He would beg on the streets of Cartagena, without any human respect, and, later, distribute the goods he had raised according to the needs of each person.
To the elderly he used to say, “Think, my friend that your house is already old and is threatening to crumble. Go to Confession now, while you have the time and while it’s easy.”
In the last four years of his life, he suffered from Parkinson’s disease and his feet and hands were semi-paralyzed. Even then he would ask to be carried to the Confessional.
Now, this gold nugget! The Holy Spirit’s might and power are manifested in the striking and amazing ministry, and the bold actions of Peter Claver. When we measure our lives against such a man’s, we become aware of our own barely used potential, and our need to open ourselves more to the explosive power of Jesus’ Spirit.
St. Peter Claver learned, lived, loved and left an eternal legacy! His extremely long years of labour rolled open in a –“crucified sameness”, day after day! St. Peter Claver had no alternative: He kissed and sucked loathsome ulcers; a noble feat which is regarded as heroic in other Saints, when done only once! He was Christ-like in his sacrifice among the slaves of Carthagena.
The punch line! Jesus was born in 3,00,000 souls of slaves, whom he converted to the faith!
And, this final flourish! “We must speak to the terribly marginalized with our hands before we speak to them with our lips.”
Leon Bent is an ex-Seminarian and studied the Liberal Arts and Humanities, and Philosophy, from St. Pius X College, Mumbai. He holds Masters Degree in English Literature and Aesthetics. He has published three Books and have 20 on the anvil. He has two extensively “Researched” Volumes to his name: Hail Full of Grace and Matrimony: The Thousand Faces of Love. He won The Examiner, Silver Pen Award, 2000 for writing on Social Issues, the clincher being a Researched Article on Gypsies in India, published in an issue of the (worldwide circulation) Vidyajyoti Journal of Theological Reflection, New Delhi. On April, 28, 2018, Leon received the Cardinal Ivan Dias Award for a research paper in Mariology.