+ St. Peter Claver was among the first Jesuits. He was born in 1581 at Verdu, Catalonia, Spain. He was a farmer's son. He was very bright and studied at the University of Barcelona. He entered the Jesuits at age 20. Ordained a priest, he was influenced by St. Alphonsus Rodriguez, a humble Jesuit doorkeeper for forty years at the Jesuit school at Majorca, to become a missionary in America. But first he ministered physically and spiritually to slaves when they arrived in Cartegena (along the southern shore of Spain) converting a reported 300,000 of them and working for humane treatment on the plantations. Then he organized charitable societies among the Spanish in America similar to those organized in Europe by St. Vincent de Paul. Peter said of the slaves, "We must speak to them with our hands by giving, before we try to speak to them with our lips." He died September 8, 1654 at Cartegena of natural causes. In 1888 he was canonized by Pope Leo XIII.
The gospel passage today was part of St. Luke's Sermon on the Plain – as compared with St. Matthew's Sermon on the Mount. It is the summary of some of the most obvious and poignant of Jesus commands to demonstrate discipleship. Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. To the person who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other one as well, and from the person who takes your cloak, do not withhold even your tunic. Do to others as you would have them do to you. This is no doubt what inspired St. Peter Claver to minister to the slaves. This no doubt was the message that the slaves themselves needed to hear from Peter. This is also the message that we need to hear today – as sometimes it is difficult to say and do the right thing in the face of opposition – especially when the opposition are those closest to us.
If we don't do these things, however, St. Paul tells the Corinthians in the first reading, and we mistreat one another physically, mentally or spiritually then we are sinning against Christ who dwells in the ones we are hurting. Our goal is to be conscious of the fact that we all exist in God's very love, in his very heart, with his very power to do good and to love others ingrained in us by our baptisms. This ought to make loving easy – and the perfection of it a foreseeable conclusion for us.
Guide us, Lord, along the everlasting way – a way whose path-light is powered by good deeds well done out of love for God and one another – (today we remember) after the example of St. Peter Claver!
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