To My Boys: September 9, 2020
Good morning!
Usually, when I write the morning email I try to change it up so I don’t clobber you every day with one kind of email or another. Today some spiritual, tomorrow something practical, etc. Not this morning. I am breaking my normal style of email content to hit you with another spiritual one. Yesterday you may remember, I wrote about the Blessed Mother and how it was her birthday and also the feast day of Our Lady Queen of Charity. Today, I would be remiss if I didn’t write a little something about St. Peter Claver, S.J.
September 9th is his feast day and he is one of my favorite Jesuit saints. Forget Jesuit, he is one of my favorite all-time saints. Really, he makes the holy All-Star Team. Born in Spain in 1581, he joined the Jesuits and was immediately sent as a missionary to the port city of Cartagena in Colombia. It was here that Peter Claver found his true calling as a Jesuit.
Claver noticed the huge ships that pulled into port loaded with tens of thousands of slaves. Their conditions were deplorable and their treatment inhumane. No one would stand up for them or comfort them or feed them. Here he saw what his purpose in life needed to be. Every morning, he would run to the wharf and wait for the ship to pull in. When many rushed to get off the boat after a long and treacherous journey, he ran to get on in order to minister to the slaves down in the gallows. He mended their wounds, fed them, gave them water, and clothed them. Claver became the only source of consolation for them as they arrived in such an extraordinarily hostile environment.
Realizing there was much more he could do, he began to preach in the streets against the evil of slavery. The Catholic Church had condemned the practice vehemently, but the lucrative business had caused slave traders to pay no attention. Claver also visited the plantations to give spiritual consolation to the slaves. He preached to sailors and traders in the city squares and conducted missions, returning every spring to visit those he had baptized, ensuring that they were treated humanely. During these missions, he avoided the hospitality of planters and overseers, lodging in the slave quarters.
It is for this reason, he gave himself the title “the slave of the slaves.” Pedro Claver died on September 8, 1654. He was canonized in 1888 by Pope Leo XIII and declared the patron of missionary work among all African peoples. He is also one of the patron saints of Colombia. This is why he makes my All-Star team of saints and why his image will be in the new Belen chapel. He was a true man for others.
Auspice Maria
BELEN JESUIT PREPARATORY SCHOOL
500 SW 127th Avenue, Miami, FL 33184
phone: 305.223.8600 | fax: 305.227.2565 | email: webmaster@belenjesuit.org
500 SW 127th Avenue, Miami, FL 33184
phone: 305.223.8600 | fax: 305.227.2565 | email: webmaster@belenjesuit.org
Belen Jesuit Preparatory School was founded in 1854 in Havana, Cuba by Queen Isabel II of Spain. The task of educating students was assigned to the priests and brothers of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), whose teaching tradition is synonymous with academic excellence and spiritual discipline. In 1961, the new political regime of Cuba confiscated the School property and expelled the Jesuit faculty. The School was re-established in Miami the same year, and over the next decade, continued to grow. Today, Belen Jesuit sits on a 30-acre site in western Dade County, only minutes away from downtown Miami.