St. Peter Claver, priest

“To love God as He ought to be loved, we must be detached from all temporal love.

We must love nothing but him, or if we love anything else, we must love it, only for his sake.”

 

＊＊＊ 1st Reading ＊＊＊     

Colossians 2:6-15

If you have accepted

Christ Jesus as Lord, let him be your doctrine. Be rooted and built up in him;

let faith be your principle, as you were taught, and your thanksgiving, overflowing.

See that no one deceives you with philosophy or any hollow discourse;

these are merely human doctrines, not inspired by Christ,

but by the wisdom of this world. For in him, dwells the fullness of God,

in bodily form. He is the head of all cosmic power and authority, and, in him, you have everything.

 

In Christ Jesus, you were given a circumcision, but not by human hands,

which removed completely from you the carnal body: I refer to baptism.

On receiving it, you were buried with Christ; and you also rose with him,

for having believed in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.

You were dead. You were in sin and uncircumcised at the same time.

 

But God gave you life with Christ. He forgave all our sins. He canceled the record of our debts,

those regulations which accused us. He did away with all that, and nailed it to the cross.

Victorious through the cross, he stripped the rulers and authorities of their power,

humbled them before the eyes of the whole world, and dragged them behind him, as prisoners.

 

Ps 145:1b-2, 8-9, 10-11 The Lord is compassionate toward all his works.

 

＊＊＊ Gospel ＊＊＊       

Luke 6:12-19

At this time, Jesus went out into the hills to pray, spending the whole night in prayer with God.

When day came, he called his disciples to him, and chose Twelve of them, whom he called 'apostles':

Simon, whom he named Peter, and his brother Andrew; James and John; Philip and Bartholomew;

Matthew and Thomas; James son of Alpheus and Simon called the Zealot;

Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who would be the traitor.

 

Coming down the hill with them, Jesus stood in an open plain.

Many of his disciples were there, and a large crowd of people,

who had come from all parts of Judea and Jerusalem, and from the coastal cities of Tyre and Sidon.

They gathered to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. And people troubled by unclean spirits were cured.

The entire crowd tried to touch him, because of the power that went out from him and healed them all.

 

Gospel Reflection ：

"God gave you life with Christ."

Saint Peter Claver was a seventeenth century Spanish Jesuit who is the patron saint of enslaved people.

He was deeply disturbed by the harsh treatment of the black enslaved people brought from Africa to the New World for gold and silver mining,

and so he dedicated most of his ministry to caring for their welfare and advocating for their rights,

personally catechizing and baptizing 300,000 slaves. Once baptized, Saint Peter Claver would ensure that they received their Christian and civil rights.

He would refuse the hospitality of the plantation owners and would often sleep in the same lodgings as the slaves.

 

Saint Paul says, "God gave you life with Christ." We see this in the life of Saint Peter Claver.

His whole life is a revelation of his union with Christ since he lived completely for others.

That union also produced miracles, since, like the crowd trying to touch Jesus for healing, the slaves would seek healing from Peter Claver.

He would board the slave ships to tend to the sick, and it was said that if he covered someone with the cloak he was wearing, that person would be healed.