Memorial of Saint Peter Claver, Priest

 Lectionary: 439

Blessed are you who are poor, for the Kingdom of God is yours. Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh.

One evening I listened to a woman speculating on the radio about that familiar phrase from the American Declaration of Independence, "the pursuit of happiness." She wondered if Americans should aspire to something more than happiness. I supposed she and her guest expert might talk about goodness, truth, or beauty. (Silly me!) 

They talked about pleasure, joy, and ecstacy. 

I was reminded again that I am a stranger in a strange land. I cannot imagine an ambition more pointless than the pursuit of happiness. I once heard a story -- perhaps an urban legend -- of five fellows who bonded as a fraternity, committed to happiness. Within seven days one had committed suicide. 

As the Church commemorates Saint Peter Claver, the Jesuit priest who made himself "a slave of slaves," we hear Saint Luke's challenge to the mores of our society: "Blessed are the poor; blessed are the hungry; blessed are those who mourn...." They will be receive the Kingdom of God; they will be satisfied; they will be comforted.

These promises are not made with the proviso that unfortunate people should prove themselve worthy. The poor might never hear the promise that, if they pray and fast and renounce the pursuit of wealth, security, prestige, and power they will be blessed. In Saint Luke's gospel the poor enjoy God's favor because they are poor. 

Saint Peter Claver took that message to heart. The Spanish Jesuit set out as a young missionary to convert the "new world" of the Americas to Christ. Arriving in a Cartagena, a major Columbian port, he found a thriving industry of slavery. Hundreds of thousands of African men and women were brought in chains to work as slaves in the sugar cane fields. According to Hugh Thomas in his history, The Slave Trade, they were mostly men and they survived under merciless labor about ten years from arrival. It was cheaper to import more slaves than to utilize slave women to birth, suckle, and raise slave children. If the Spaniard could not stop the industry, which had been moribund until the process of refining sugar was discovered, he could baptize the African imports, teach them about a compassionate God, and hope they might be treated as fellow Christians by a Christian culture. 

His only asset was his boundless kindness. He could not speak the languages of Africa; nor was he allowed much time between their arrival and their distribution to the plantations. He buried many of the dead, carrying their corpses out of the ships and onto the beach. He revived some with aromatic herbs. He used interpreters to persuade them they would not be eaten, and then to teach them rudimentary prayers. He found some support among wealthy, pious women of Cartagena; with their money he could purchase food, medicines, and hire some people to assist him. He preferred to live in the slave quarters while he was healthy, but spent his last days in a Jesuit home, under the rough care of a slave. Upon his death he was feted by the very magistrates who had resented his interference. 

If the slave industry has diminished today, and mostly gone underground, its evil spirit remains. The money that sloshed around sixteenth century slave markets still surges through the international financial markets. Attitudes, standard operating procedures, methods, and principles remain. Bookkeeping systems monitize human labor into dollars, euros, Renminbi, and yen without calculating the human cost. And the poor, as Jesus predicted, remain with us. 

Saint Peter Claver died a happy man, and we count him among the Blessed. Long before the Enlightenment and its vain pursuit, he served the Lord in filth, misery, and deep sadness.