Memorial of Saint Peter Claver

MSF Picnic 2010

Knowledge inflates with pride, but love builds up.
If anyone supposes he knows something,
he does not yet know as he ought to know.
But if one loves God, one is known by him.

Zen Buddhism has a similar saying to Saint Paul’s cautionary adage: Those who say do not know; those who know do not say. 
It’s a useful remark to keep handy whenever we find ourselves trying to explain the Eucharist, the Trinity or some other Christian doctrine. We are speaking of mysteries here. Do so with reverence for the teaching, your hearers and yourself. Beware of thinking you know something for knowledge inflates the ego while love edifies. (Edify comes from the Latin verb for build.) Religious wars may be spawned by ego inflation, but charity is willing to lose everything for the sake of the beloved.

Paul’s next statement takes us even deeper: “If one loves God, one is known by God.” At the heart of the Christian experience is the realization that I have been caught up in something larger, deeper, more powerful and more sublime than anything I can understand or control. I did not choose this; rather it chose me. To love God is to be seen by God. The experience is unnerving.

In that passive experience of love the Christian finds enormous freedom. For instance, she can eat anything or choose to eat nothing. In Corinth, it would seem, all meat was offered first as a sacrifice to the gods, then taken to market and sold. Could a Christian eat idolatrous food? Saint Paul said, “Since there is no other god but our God, you can eat that meat! However, if someone is scandalized by your eating that meat, don’t!”

To summarize, knowledge inflates with pride and binds one’s hands, while true love allows one to live in the mystery of not-knowing as it sets one free to sail with the winds of the Holy Spirit.

Saint Peter Claver, whose feast is today, demonstrates that freedom of the Christian. He gave his life in passionate devotion to African slaves as they arrived in Cartagena, Columbia. He called himself "the slave of the slaves" as he cared for the sick and the dying and baptized those who were able to understand his invitation to faith. He could not stop the slave trade. It was at that time as big as the manufacture of weapons is today. But he could treat with compassion those whom the world regarded as commodities.