St. Peter Claver, Apostle to the Slaves; John Paul II in Canada 25 Years Ago

If anyone wonders what exactly it is that constitutes a Saint, he has only to read the life of Saint Peter Claver, in whom the superhuman life of grace acted so visibly as to create a person who seemed more than a man.

This holy Jesuit, born in Spain in 1580, was during his novitiate a disciple of Saint Alphonsus Rodriguez, “the holy porter of Majorca”, a humble lay-brother endowed with the highest gifts of contemplation and prophecy. The two would eventually be canonized together by Pope Leo XIII in 1888, thus cementing the perfect union which began on earth and certainly continues in heaven.

Saint Alphonsus, when he saw the novice for the first time, was inspired to kiss his feet; and the novice embraced his spiritual father with a tenderness which would increase with time. A little later, the preceptor learned from a vision that this novice was destined to save a multitude of souls in the New World; he said to Peter: “How many peoples go astray for lack of ministers! The fatigue of going to seek them out is dreaded, but not the danger and crime which it is to abandon them!” Eventually Saint Alphonsus told him of his divinely revealed calling to inspire in him an active desire to respond to the explicit Will of God.

After eight years of study and apostolic preparation in Spain, Saint Peter asked to go to the Jesuit missions of the Western Indies, and was sent to Carthagena in Colombia, South America, when he was thirty years old. He was assigned to accompany an elderly priest who had undertaken a ministry of service to the poor Africans brought to be sold in the market of that city.

These poor strangers spoke several languages but shared a common misery, which Saint Peter soon saw clearly. When the holds of the boats were opened, “all one beheld was a confused mass of men, women, children and old men, sick persons mingled with healthy ones, and often, alas! living beings next to cadavers, for the crossing made victims.” The elderly forerunner of Peter, when about to retire, asked that the objects of his care be definitively confided to Peter Claver, a petition willingly granted.

Thus began forty-four years of unceasing dedication to their spiritual and material betterment by Saint Peter. He watched for the arrival of the slave ships, which brought from ten to twelve thousand souls each year, and never failed to be the first to go aboard, accompanied by his interpreters and carrying the provisions he had been able to beg. He greeted the living, arranged for the burial of the dead and the transport of the sick to hospitals.

Having won their sympathy, he went to them regularly with his interpreters and taught them, during several hours’ time, the elements of doctrine, aided by pictures. Before he died, he had baptized 400,000. He put around the necks of each newly baptized child of God, a medal which would thereafter distinguish the Christians from the yet untaught.

Though this was his principal industry, he also spent many days in the nearby lazaretto — a refuge for lepers — and in the hospitals of the region. No infirmity repelled him; the Brother who accompanied him had several times a day to clean his cloak, on which he would lay the sick while he arranged their poor beds. It never ceased to emit a heavenly fragrance. He slept only two or three hours at night, and ate almost nothing.

The poor were his beloved children and he their beloved father, whose visits were anxiously awaited and were always too short. Those who resisted him did not do so indefinitely; one man insulted him for twenty-two years, but at the end of that time fell on his knees and begged his pardon. The vision of his charity is certainly reserved for heaven; his biographers scarcely find words adequate to describe his heroic life.

Pope Pius IX, who beatified Saint Peter in 1851, commented that never had he read a life of a Saint which so moved him.

After Saint Peter contracted the plague in his declining years, he was left infirm and partially paralyzed. He then had himself tied to a donkey and in that way went about begging and distributing provisions. He had a rude servant who often neglected him and mistreated him, but when his brethren offered him another, asked to be allowed to keep that one, who treated him far better than he deserved.

Two years after his death at the age of seventy-four, his body was found intact, despite the humidity of the burial site and the live caustic covering it. Miracles proliferated there and elsewhere by the invocation of his name. A large church was built in Carthagena in his honor, and he became the secondary patron of his adopted land, Colombia.

Peter Claver understood that concrete service like the distributing of medicine, food or brandy to his black brothers and sisters could be as effective a communication of the word of God as mere verbal preaching. As Claver often said, "We must speak to them with our hands before we try to speak to them with our lips."

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RECALLING JOHN PAUL II’S PASTORAL VISIT TO CANADA, SEPTEMBER 1984


A quarter of a century ago today, Sunday, September 9, 1984, Pope John Paul began his pastoral visit to Canada with a Mass at Laval University, Quebec. He spoke on the confession that Jesus is the Messiah made by Simon Peter at Caesarea Philippi, which we will hear next Sunday in its Markan form. He spoke of faith and culture, issues still topical in Quebec and Canada these days. Here is an excerpt from that homily, mainly in French, partly in English:

Comme Evêque de Rome, successeur de Pierre, je désire prononcer ces mêmes paroles aujourd’hui sur la terre canadienne :

“Tu es le Christ, le Fils du Dieu vivant!” (Mathieu 16, 16).

Il est donné à l’évêque de Rome de fouler pour la première fois cette terre, dans la ville de Québec. Ici, débuta l’évangélisation du Canada. Ici, l’Eglise fut fondée. Ce fut ici le premier diocèse de toute l’Amérique du Nord. Ici par le grain semé en terre commença une immense croissance.

C’est pourquoi je désire que, dès le début de ce pèlerinage, nous nous rencontrions et nous nous unissions dans cette profession de foi sur laquelle est bâtie l’Eglise du Christ sur la terre: le Christ, le Fils de l’homme, le Fils du Dieu vivant; le Fils, de la même nature que le Père: Dieu, né de Dieu, Lumière, née de la Lumière; engendré, non pas créé, Verbe éternel par qui tout a été créé; et en même temps: le Christ, vrai homme. …

Car nous sommes ici au premier foyer de l’Eglise du Christ en Amérique du Nord. Partis de France, les Jacques Cartier, les Champlain et tant d’autres, en apportant sur ce continent leur culture et leur langue, contribuaient à implanter la foi au Christ Sauveur.

De nombreux serviteurs et servantes de Dieu sont venus, dès le début de la colonisation, pour construire l’édifice de l’Eglise sur votre terre. Les Pères Récollets, les Jésuites, les Sulpiciens, les Ursulines avec Marie de l’Incarnation rayonnant son incomparable expérience spirituelle, les Hospitalières de Dieppe entraînées par l’inépuisable charité de Catherine de Saint-Augustin: ces religieux et ces religieuses ont été parmi les premiers à témoigner de la foi et de l’amour du Christ au milieu des colons et des “Indiens”.

Porteurs de la Parole, éducateurs des jeunes, bons samaritains auprès des malades, ils ont façonné le visage de l’Eglise dans ce nouveau pays. On a pu parler d’une véritable “épopée mystique” dès la première moitié du XVIIe siècle. Certains ont donné leur vie jusqu’au martyre. Beaucoup d’autres les ont rejoints, apportant leur pierre vivante à la construction, souvent dans la pauvreté mais rendus forts par l’Esprit de Dieu.

En ce lieu, nous évoquons en particulier François de Montmorency Laval, vicaire apostolique puis premier évêque de Québec. Je ne puis oublier que le séminaire qui porte son nom est à l’origine de l’Université qui nous accueille en ce moment dans ce site admirable.

Vos ancêtres ont forgé ici une culture en puisant aux sources de leur pays d’origine. Au long des siècles, cet héritage s’est enraciné, diversifié; il a accueilli l’apport propre des Amérindiens, et tiré profit de la présence anglaise en ce continent. Il s’est enrichi grâce aux vagues successives d’immigrants venues de partout. Votre peuple a su conserver son identité en demeurant ouvert aux autres cultures. …

Votre devise est “Je me souviens”. Il y a vraiment des trésors dans la mémoire de l’Eglise comme dans la mémoire d’un peuple!

Mais à chaque génération, la mémoire vivante permet de reconnaître la présence du Christ, qui nous interroge comme aux environs de Césarée: “Vous, que dites-vous que je suis?”.

La réponse à cette question est capitale pour l’avenir de l’Eglise au Canada, et aussi pour l’avenir de votre culture.

Vous constatez que la culture traditionnelle - caractérisant une certaine “chrétienté” - a éclaté: elle s’est ouverte à un pluralisme de courants de pensée et doit répondre à de multiples questions nouvelles; les sciences, les techniques et les arts prennent une importance croissante; les valeurs matérielles sont omniprésentes; mais aussi une sensibilité plus grande apparaît pour promouvoir les droits de l’homme, la paix, la justice, l’égalité, le partage, la liberté . . .

La culture - et de même l’éducation qui est la tâche première et essentielle de la culture - est la recherche fondamentale du beau, du vrai, du bien qui exprime au mieux l’homme, comme “le sujet porteur de la transcendance de la personne” (Ioannis Pauli PP. II, Allocutio ad UNESCO habita, 10, die 2 iun. 1980: Insegnamenti di Giovanni Poalo II, III, 1 (1980) 1643), qui l’aide à devenir ce qu’il doit “être” et pas seulement à se prévaloir de ce qu’il “a” ou de ce qu’il “possède”.

Votre culture est non seulement le reflet de ce que vous êtes, mais le creuset de ce que vous deviendrez. Vous développerez donc votre culture d’une façon vivante et dynamique dans l’espérance, sans peur des questions difficiles ou des défis nouveaux; sans pour autant vous laisser abuser par l’éclat de la nouveauté, et sans laisser s’installer un vide, une discontinuité entre le passé et l’avenir; autrement dit, avec discernement et prudence, et avec le courage de la liberté critique à l’égard de ce qu’on pourrait appeler “l’industrie culturelle”; surtout avec le plus grand souci de la vérité.

But in addressing myself here to believers, I again repeat what I expressed at UNESCO: "I am thinking above all of the fundamental link between the Gospel, that is, the message of Christ and the Church, and man and his very humanity" (Ibid.). Yes, dear brothers and sisters, in the culture that you are now developing, which is in line with what you already are by reason of a rich past, in this culture which is always the soul of a nation (Ibid., n. 14: l.c., pp. 1647 s.), faith plays a great part.

Faith will illuminate culture, it will give it savour, it will enhance it, as the Gospel says in regard to that "light", "salt" and "leaven" which the disciples of Jesus are called to be. Faith will ask culture what values it promotes, what destiny it offers to life, what place it makes for the poor and the disinherited with whom the Son of Man is identified, how it conceives of sharing, forgiveness and love.

If it is this way, the Church will continue to accomplish her mission through you. And you will render service to all society, even to men and women who do not share the same spiritual experience as yourselves. For such a witness respects freedom of consciences, without thus abandoning them to certain "imperatives" of modern civilization which claim to serve human advancement but which in fact detract from respect for life, from the dignity of a love that involves persons, and from the search for the true values of humanity (Ioannis Pauli PP. II,Allocutio ad UNESCO habita, 13, die 2 iun. 1980: Insegnamenti di Giovanni Paolo II, III, 1 (1980) 1646).

But again your faith must remain active and strong; it must become always more personal, more and more rooted in prayer and in the experience of the Sacraments; it must reach the living God, in his Son Jesus Christ the Saviour, through the help of the Holy Spirit, in the Church. This is the faith that you ought to deepen with joy, in order to live it and to bear witness to it in daily life and in the new realms of culture. This is indeed the grace which we must request for the future of Quebec, for the future of all Canada. And here we are back to the fundamental question of Jesus Christ: "And you, who do you say that I am?"