Sep 09 2008
St. Peter Claver (1580 – 1654)
Today’s saint was a Spanish Jesuit and missionary to South America where he dedicated himself to serving the African people who were kidnapped, transported to Colombia, and sold into slavery. When he canonized St Peter in 1888, Pope Leo XIII declared him the patron saint of all missions to black people and nations. Let pray with St. Peter Claver today for refugees forced from their homes like the people he served. Our reflection is from a talk that Fr. John Hardon, S.J. gave and which appears on the Real Presence Eucharistic Education and Adoration Association’s web site.
Now something about Peter Claver’s missionary apostolate. It was by all odds, one of the most unique in the Church’s missionary history. Claver recognized that these people are not to be just baptized; before being baptized they must first be instructed. … His hardest task was to restore some self-respect to these people who had been treated so inhumanly for so long. His principle effort … was to try to show to these naked slaves that they were still loved. …The lowest estimate reported in Peter Claver’s canonization was three hundred thousand baptisms. And we’re told the slaves persevered and they made better Christians than their slave owners. …
Now something about his spirituality. First of all, there are few saints in the Church’s calendar that teach us more about the virtue of mercy than Peter Claver. … Our Holy Father defines mercy as love overcoming resistance. He tells us that mercy is costly love. Mercy is love that loves in spite of obstacles, difficulties, natural reluctance, and in this case, positive revulsion. Few canonized … more clearly illustrate St. Ignatius’ teaching about the nature of love. “Love … is shown more in deeds than in words. Love does not mean that I like to do what I’m doing, love means that I do it.” … And the doing is your love. The resistance, the revulsion, the dislike – Claver had all of that. He would admit more than once that it took all his human power to penetrate that den of stench when he climbed into the holes of those slave ships. We need that. And that’s why God every so often raises a saint like this, to teach us who can be so finicky, so particular and in our affluent United States, so spoiled. That’s the first lesson. And remember that statement revealed by the Holy Spirit. Learn this. ‘I want mercy, not sacrifice.’ In other words, the sacrifice, even the sacrifice of the Mass, the sublimest that we can offer, is only as pleasing to God as it is joined with mercy, which means that I love in spite of the fact that nature holds me back.
Today’s Readings: 1 Corinthians 6:1-11; Psalm 149:1b-6a, 9b; Luke 6:12-19
The author of the Gospel that bears his name is identified with John Mark, whose mother Mary’s house was used as a meeting place by the early Church in Jerusalem (see Acts 12: 12, 25). His cousin was St. Barnabas and, when Sts. Paul and Barnabas went on a missionary journey, Mark accompanied them. But Mark left them and St. Paul’s loss of confidence in him led to a split with Barnabas. Even in the early Church there were conflicts and hard feelings. In time they were reconciled and Mark helped Paul when he was in prison in Rome (Colossians 4: 10). It was while Mark was in Rome that he got to know St. Peter (1 Peter 5: 13) from whom he acquired the material he used to write his Gospel. As we continue our prayer with a focus on this month’s Mission Intention, let us pray that future priests may develop a deep love for Scripture. By meeting the Lord Jesus present in the Scriptures may they grow closer to him and be filled with a desire to share the Good News of Jesus with everyone they meet and serve.
St. Fidelis, a name which means “Faithful”, was born in what is now Germany and became known as “the poor man’s lawyer” because he generously gave his time to defend the rights of the poor who could not afford the services of a lawyer. In 1612 he left this profession and became a Capuchin Franciscan. In 1622 the Pope created a special office in the Vatican to coordinate the Church’s missionary activities around the world—the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. St. Fidelis was placed in charge of the Capuchin mission in Switzerland and he was so successful in bringing back Catholics who had left the Church during the Protestant Reformation that he was martyred, making him the Proto-martyr of the Propagation of the Faith. We ask this faithful witness to intercede with us for future priests: may they be courageous and faithful in bringing the Catholic faith to their people. Our reflection is from Pope John Paul’s Apostolic Exhortation, “Shepherds After My Own Heart,” on the Formation of Priests, #46.
Today’s saint was a great missionary bishop who suffered martyrdom at the hands of pagan priests in Prussia. In 1997 Pope John Paul II visited the Czech Republic where St. Adalbert was bishop to celebrate the millennial anniversary of his death. Reflecting now on the Holy Father’s words at that celebration, let us pray that the future priests in the younger dioceses of the world will have the same missionary zeal of today’s saint.
Today is a special feast day for the Society of Jesus, the religious order to which the popes of the last century have entrusted the work of the Apostleship of Prayer. St. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, had a deep devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary and begged for her help at all the critical moments of his life and in the life of his order. On this day in 1541, after receiving official papal approval of his order and being elected its first General Superior, St. Ignatius and his first companions celebrated Mass and pronounced their vows at Our Lady’s altar in the church of St. Paul Outside-the-Walls in Rome. As we pray the following three prayers to the Blessed Virgin, let us ask that all Jesuit seminarians, as well as seminarians in mission countries, may grow in holiness and zeal for souls.
St. Anselm is a good example of someone who knew the love of God and was ready to go anywhere and do anything to spread the knowledge of that love. He was born in northern Italy, became a Benedictine monk in France where he became a great theologian, and was made Archbishop of Canterbury in England. Let us ask St. Anselm to join us today in our prayer for the seminarians of the world, and in particular for the future priests in mission countries. May they know the love of God as St. Anselm did and be willing to travel anywhere to share that love with those who do not know Jesus Christ. The following are two prayers of St. Anselm:
St. Bernadette, to whom the Blessed Mother appeared at Lourdes, is remembered on this day though her feast is not celebrated in the universal calendar of the Church. She is a saint not because she received visions, but because of her holiness of life which involved carrying a cross of misunderstanding and physical suffering. Our Lady herself told her: “I do not promise you happiness in this world, but in the next.” During this year we have been celebrating the 150th anniversary of the apparitions at Lourdes, when Mary revealed herself to the fourteen year old Bernadette as the “Immaculate Conception.”
St. Stanislaus, the Bishop of Krakow, excommunicated King Boleslaus II of Poland for his injustices, cruelty, and immoral life style. The King saw this as treason and on April 11, 1079, while the Bishop was celebrating Mass, he entered the church and killed him with a sword. Nine hundred years later Pope John Paul II, who had been Archbishop of Krakow, returned to his native land for the first time after being elected Pope in order to celebrate the anniversary. As we reflect on his homily at that time, let us pray that the resurrection may not only give us hope but also courage as we strive to make good decisions and live moral lives.