Of course, more often than not he made use of much more religious means of intercession, such as relics, holy water (a sacramental that the saint never tired of sprinkling everywhere) and a rough-hewn cross of maple. During the time that the blacks spent in the sheds, they were penned so closely that they had to sleep almost upon one another and, thereby, freely handed on their diseases nonetheless, Claver was seen caring for the bodies of the sick and the souls of all. In college, Claver met Alphonsus Rodriguez who was a porter at the college and that meeting was to set the direction of Peter Clavers life thereafter. The Sisters of St Peter Claver were founded by Blessed Theresa Ledchowska. So ugly was the business that eventually Englands conscience was so bothered by it that Great Britain abolished the slave trade in 1815 while America continued it for another fifty years, till Emancipation of the slaves by its 16th president, Abraham Lincoln. The fleet of three galleons set sail on April 10, 1610. Nor was the saint known to into ecstasies at the altar. We made every effort to encourage them with friendly gestures and displayed in their presence the emotions which somehow naturally tend to hearten the sick. He brought them anything they desired: tobacco, sweets, good books, cakes, even paper and a pen to write letters with. All he did for the ancestors aligned him with the God of love. ". As one writer puts it, Piety only offends when implies a censorious verdict on the impious, for it is preachiness, not preaching, that most people resent. Of course, at times Claver knew he had to be very direct, as he was on one occasion when he said to a man about to leave the city in the company of a loose-living woman, It bothers me to see you about to travel with the devil. The arrow struck fast and so tormented the sinners conscience that he returned that very night to the rectory, and in sobs unburdened his sinful life to the ears of the holy priest. But the scanty amount of food proved a blessing to many, who, afflicted with disease, would have been consumed more rapidly if they had had a healthier diet. St. Alphonsus Rodriguez, SJ (1533-1617) For two months, these blacks had been chained and shackled below deck in a floating hell, the men in one compartment, the women in another. If ever there was an ugly stain upon the birth of a nation, it was the stigma of the slave trade in the foundation of the Americas. The major contagion was smallpox; but others. Give your warning sign if danger is near so that I may stop while the path is clear. As the transplanted Africans struggled to comprehend the evil that had befallen them, their intrinsic spiritual natures discovered something unique in America they had not seen before a fully articulated ritual relationship with the Supreme Being, who was pictured in the book Christians called the Bible not just as Creator and Ruler, but also as the God of History, a God who lifted up and cast down nations and peoples. He would then wash them with his own hands and dress their wounds with medicines that he previously begged for in the market place. He became the apostle of Cartagena as well as of the Africans and in so huge a work was aided by God with those gifts that particularly pertain to apostles, of miracles, of prophecy and of reading hearts. Three solemn funeral Masses were sung, one of which was under the auspices of the Negroes themselves and their choir; while three orators from different orders tried to outdo one another in extolling the virtues of the man who had so inflamed the city. This was his city. The LA Sheriffs department announced that OConnells death was being investigated as a homicide. And for the longest time no one but God and the saints of heaven knew what the holy man was going through. Cartagena was hit with five major epidemics during Clavers apostleship (1615-1654). 2023 Knights of Peter Claver Every year from twelve to fourteen slave ships entered the port of Cartagena. He was born on the Island of Sardinia. They turned their eyes to Africa to find that labor force. Photo by Sid Hastings Sid Hastings A relic of St. Peter Claver in a. I was able to track down the . black labor. The devil always wants to create division, and it is what he sets out to do by tempting Jesus. For here dwelt the living dead- the very pit of human misery. He never bothered philosophizing about the evils of a system, while planting class hatred and bitterness, as the Socialists of our day do. And if his love for her was great, her was no less for him. They lay there together, in fear, like sardines, naked and bleeding in the cold damp of winter or the excruciating heat of summer, with but one daily feeding of corn and water to sustain them. Clavers fame spread throughout the world. Leader: God, + come to my assistance. 2 Now a man crippled from birth was being carried to the temple gate called Beautiful, where he was put every day to beg from those going into the temple courts. Claver came from an ethic of religious consecration where missionaries dared death, hardship, sickness and every conceivable challenge to bring the gospel to foreign lands. Devil means divider. They were sinners in need of repentance and divine mercy. Sometimes he would have to yield to nature and collapse. St. Peter Claver Church was established in the early 1900s, after Black parishioners experienced racism from white Catholics at a nearby church. Often the English and French seawolves would prey on the Granadan coastline, firing cannon balls and wielding swords, looking for an opportune time to land and loot the city. Episode 364: What Is the Point of Lent? Traveling in these areas Father Claver habitually refused as much as possible the hospitality of the planters and owners and instead lodged in the quarters of the slaves checking on conditions and speaking to their owners and masters, advocating for the slaves. After a wearisome voyage he landed with his companions at Cartagena what is today the coast of modern day Colombia, South America. He announced to Brother Gonzales that he would die on the next festival of the Blessed Virgin. He, his wife, and daughter settled in St. Joseph's Parish in St. Louis, Missouri. Claver knew that the blacks were never going to see in their lifetime much, if any, material happiness on earth, certainly not the pie-in-the-sky utopias of Karl Marx and his disciple, Martin Luther King, Jr. The slave ship, having been anchored in the harbor, suddenly had its hatch yanked open and the light of the sun flooded in upon the prisoners wretchedness. The final emergence was on behalf of the lepers at Saint Lazarus. February 17th 1937 was a day upon which a miracle happened. Slavery evolved into legalized discrimination and segregation in the so-called democratic experiment. What! One can hear the experts on the psychology of the underprivileged gasp- How dare he arouse guilt complexes with these victims of white racism!. Due to the tremendous respect everyone has for the extraordinary Jesuit, these warnings always produced the desired fruit. Why? He was an early Pioneer for Human Rites and showed. He drew them by his humility and his Christlikeness. Miracles of St. Peter Claver Ignatius Strecker came to America from Germany in 1853. The diocese writes: Dear Frs & Srs, Sr. Milagrine Dantas Fatima Sister from Sawantwadi, Sindhudurg along with two other Fatima Sister and their Parish Priest and other two persons met with an fatal accident as truck rams into their four wheeler at Shillong. There was another sail that was a dreaded sight for a Cartagenian, a sail that used to make Father Sandoval, Clavers instructor in the science of charity, tremble and break out in a cold sweat- the sail of the slave ship! He became the prophet and miracle worker of New Granada, the oracle of Cartagena, and all were convinced that often God would not have spared the city save for him. Never had any of them been loved as this man had loved them. Her body began to move. The ceremony was initiated with a rosary then a mass blessing of the. Clavers dearest benefactress, the Martha of his apostolate, Dona Isabel de Urbina, would prepare the dishes for these delightful festivals of charity. While he preached, he suffered. Our Saints upbringing carries nothing too spectacular about it. It was reckoned that there would be a loss in each cargo by death during the six or seven weeks voyage of a least a third. Absentee Line: (07) 3810 5950 Brother Alonso, as the Spaniards called him, not only held the key to the college, but he also had the key to Peter Clavers heart. Father Peter Claver never fully recovered consciousness and died two days later on the birthday of Mary, the Mother of God, September 8, about two oclock in the morning, in the year of our Lord 1654. ); but the claim that he was its bishop is an anachronism. To conclude the sessions he would hold aloft the crucifix and have the slaves join in together with the prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Thou art my Father. He died in 1654. Thousands pressed forward to touch their Rosaries, linens, and medals to his hands and to his feet, which were left uncovered. Saint Peter Claver Church was established in 1931 to serve the African American community of greater Montclair, New Jersey. Alphonsus intuited the capabilities of the young scholastic and saw in him a man fit for new, arduous and neglected work up to now unattended to, namely working among blacks in bondage. While he was studying philosophy at Majorca in 1605, Alphonsus Rodriguez, the saintly door-keeper of the college, learned from God the future mission of his young associate, and thenceforth never ceased exhorting him to set out to evangelize the Spanish possessions in America. One Dutchman was particularly hard, and assaulted Father Claver verbally every time he saw him, shouting in his fury that the priest would never bewitch him as he did the others. To counter the Protestant revolt, the Jesuits, founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola, had emerged from among the most talented of religious leaders for their time sworn to allegiance to their superior general and to the pope in Rome. It's a little awkward to ask, but we need your help. Website powered by MemberLeap. Diei 31 maii 1627 ad Superiorem suum data: edit. The Knights of Peter Claver: St. Martin De Porres Council #297 and Ladies Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Francis Court #297 of The Archdiocese of Newark had a 3rd Degree Turnout on Sunday, August 11th, after 10:30 am Mass at Christ The King Church, Jersey City. Much as men are willing to forgive those, who wrong them, yet they' never . Another saint whom he had known at school in Majorca, Saint Alphonsus Rodriguez, revealed his road in life to him. Like all young men of his stripe he looked for adventure and new opportunities. At fourteen, he left home to pursue his vocation at the college in Barcelona. There were two hospitals in Cartagena, one for general cases, served by the Brothers of St. John of God; this was St. Sebastians hospital; and another, of St. Lazarus, for lepers and those suffering from sexually transmitted disease. In that way we covered a space to which we at last transferred the sick, by forcing a passage through bands of slaves. The slave ship is here, he crescendos, then the hook must be baited.. The first Mass at St. Peter Claver Catholic Church took place in October 1920. To prevent excessive dampness, someone had thought of building up a mound with a mixture of tiles and broken pieces of brick. Smallpox, scurvy, and other deadly plagues spread like wildfire below the deck, due to the lack of any sanitation. Again at two oclock he would return after a scanty meal and a meditation. One he always made use of was a very amateurish, one might even respectfully say ugly, representation of the Judgment. The Africans, themselves, profited by the use of slave labor; the Mohammedans made a religion of it; the Egyptian built their civilization by it; the Greek philosophers were left free to leisurely contemplate reality on account of it; the Romans conquered and disciplined the world through it; the Chinese built walls to keep out foreigners by it; Germans goose-stepped to it; the Hebrews of the Old Testament, though they had laws protecting slaves, profited by it; and the One-Worlders of our day would like to revive it, as they have been attempting to do on a world scale by their monetary power. Too bad todays social experts werent around in the seventeenth century to help the slaves. It was necessary for him to taste the abandonment of the cross. Aiding and abetting slavery was the inability of the European mind-set to process and receive and deem worthy the dignity of black skin. 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