Homily for the Memorial of Saint Peter Claver

September 9, 2024
Theological College of the Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.

Isaiah 58:6-11
Psalm 1:1-2, 3, 4, 6
Matthew 25:31-40

Saint Peter Claver was born in Spain and began life with a very shy disposition. One day, while he was praying, Peter Claver had a spiritual experience of being called by Christ, a vocation. At the encouragement of Saint Alfonso Rodriguez, he joined the Jesuits and received his assignment to serve in the missions of the Spanish colony of Colombia where he was ordained a priest in 1615. In that sense he was very much part of a system of colonization by a European power that included human trafficking and slavery.

The spiritual encounter with God that Peter intimately experienced affected his soul and he received the grace to recognize Christ Himself in each and every human person. This recognition of the Divine image within human beings was not the result of rational discourse. For Claver, the poor and the enslaved were not just symbolic for Christ — they were Christ Himself in a real presence closely akin to the Blessed Sacrament and the Word of God. This was a grace given by God for Claver’s sake and for the sake of the enslaved, their oppressors, and ultimately for the Church, to more acutely understand the words of Jesus spoken in today’s Gospel. Claver experienced unconditional love for all people and without question urgently foisted himself into addressing the physical, psychological, and spiritual needs of those enslaved. He cared for and about them because they were Christ to him. Saint Peter Claver’s vocation to be the slave of the slaves was inherent to his vocation to be a Jesuit, a missionary, and a priest.

There were other Spaniards, even churchmen, who were in the same situation as Peter Claver, but who saw the enslaved Africans differently. They saw the Africans as individual commodities and not as persons, and certainly not as Christ or as God’s children. Their decision to see no farther than the economic and political spheres cut themselves off from other persons in need and from God, and in so doing damaged also their own humanity by hardening their hearts. Their shared culture with Claver did not enable them to see the humanity of the African slaves. Their shared language with Claver did not enable them to see the humanity of the African slaves. Their shared religion with Claver did not enable them to see the humanity of the African slaves. The grace given to Claver was born of his prayer to God and of his willingness to listen and to care for human beings, transforming his prayer into compassionate action.

Peter Claver never lost his primary commitment to prayer as being at the heart of his discernment and execution of right action. In fact, the primary place of prayer was something that he brought to the slaves as he rushed into the lower decks of the ships and cared for the slaves’ wounds and disease. While reviving them physically, Peter Claver would preach by his actions and share the primary catechism of Christ’s Mercy by teaching them very simply in their own language the Lord’s Prayer before baptizing them.

We too must see the person in front of us, not merely as a symbol of a system that requires a technical interpretation, but as a person who, as a person, bears the image and likeness of God. We cannot settle for the position that racial discord is simply a matter of systemic sin; because if it were only a matter of systemic sin — there would be no hope for justice or redemption, and we could easily excuse ourselves from the Christian duties of penance, reconciliation, and restitution. Our hope is not in ourselves but in God Almighty, Who loves us enough to offer to save us from ourselves and loves us so much that He invites us to join Him in His saving work just as he invited Peter Claver and his co-workers. The scourge of sins of racism is not in some abstract and bureaucratic system, but rather our own sinful commission or omission of actions prompted by our own refusal to listen attentively for God’s voice and to act on it.

This refusal to pray forms a sinful indifference within our souls to God and to our brothers and sisters most in need. For as we hear from Jesus in today’s Gospel, when the Son of Man comes in glory accompanied by His angels He will discriminate and He will judge not by skin color, not by politics or religion, not by language or culture, but by the actions and care of those who recognized and loved Him in others most in need as distinguished from those who did not even bother to care. The sheep and the goats in today’s parable ask the same questions of the Son of Man. The difference is that the former ask the questions out of a sense of awe while the latter ask the questions out of surprise born of their indifference. The difference is that the former have acted out of compassion born of prayer then followed by the words of the Gospel, while the latter have omitted prayer and begun and ended with empty and sinful words, the bitter fruit of inaction.

As priests and seminarians who are here because we are men of prayer, we have no choice but to follow the example of Peter Claver in preaching by our actions the Godlike dignity of every human being in the face of racial enmity born of sin. The Gospel required does not advocate a change in society brought about by violent acts of anarchy; the Gospel required is not the ideological warping of our language; the Gospel required is not the revision of history; the Gospel required is my own conversion of heart and your own conversion of heart to pray and to love others by how we act and then by how we speak to every human person as possessing a mysterious dignity as Christ among us. 

This shared mission entrusted to us by Christ requires prayer on each of our parts for a renewed gratitude and celebration of our common humanity; a humanity that can be expressed by us but not mastered by us, a humanity that must not be exploited by us, nor perverted of its meaning by us. As Pope Francis spoke on this date in 2017 at the Shrine of Saint Peter Claver in Cartagena, “In short, the demand is to build peace, as Peter Claver said while ‘speaking not with the tongue but with hands and works,’ and to lift up our eyes to heaven together. The Lord is able to untangle that which seems impossible to us; He has promised to accompany us to the end of time and will not allow our efforts to come to nothing.”