Click here for today’s Scripture readings.
1 Corinthians 8:1b-7, 11-13
Luke 6:27-38
I have participated in many classes in U.S. Catholic History over the years. Many told a trans-Atlantic story of Catholics immigrating from Western Europe. I am the offspring of such courage, faith, and fortitude. I remember standing where Annie Moore stood — at the edge of County Cork — facing the Atlantic sea — with tears in my eyes as I realized that this was the spot where my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins had set sail for America. One of the most cherished photos in our family is that of the Griffin “girls,” my grandmother and Auntie Delia, Mary, and Ellen “standing on the corner” in New York City on January 1, 1900. Those were the days when people from Galway and the County Mayo came over the ocean and across the sea and began a new life in America. Those were the days when New York was Irish full of joys and heartaches. But the story was larger. It included narratives of Irish railroad workers, Welsh and English miners, Italian and Portuguese fishermen, French and Spanish laborers, German storekeepers, Polish and Lithuanian factory workers — Catholics flooding to the U.S. Their stories are testimonies of grace.
But even this story was not the whole story. It excluded the French story of New Canada and the Spanish story of the southwestern U.S. and Mexico. It neglected tales of Chinese and Japanese coming to work in America and denied voting rights, Most of all it expunged, then left out the memories of so many who came from Angola, Guinea, Congo, and Ghana in chains, in fear, in suffering that was beyond imagination. They came by the thousands. It is reported that one thousand slaves arrived per month in Cartagena — to work the fields and to turn a profit for their cruel masters. For us who proudly claim U.S. heritage, the story is heart-wrenching, isn’t it! So many were abducted from Africa in order to be sold into slavery here. Many were lynched here. Many were beaten and brutalized here. Mea maxima culpa.
So, with heavy hearts, we remember the greatness and the holiness of Saint Peter Claver. Born the son of a Catalonian farmer in Verdu in 1581, Peter entered the Society of Jesus at twenty. In 1610 he came as a Jesuit missionary to Cartagena and ministered to African slaves for thirty-four years. He cared for their embodied selves, for their physical condition and for their spiritual well being. He was renowned for the kindness he extended to each individual. It is estimated that he catechized and baptized over 300,000 African slaves. He died in 1654 and was canonized by Pope Leo XIII in 1888. Today we laud him as the patron of Catholic missions among those of African ancestry.
And there is more to the story. For many years I found myself fascinated by the fact that so many African American Catholic parishes were under the patronage of St. Peter Claver. He inspired many black Catholics to holiness and service, to roles of leadership and hope. Their story has been amply and wondrously penned by Benedictine Father Cyprian Davis, historian and monk at St. Meinrad’s Abbey in Indiana. His History of Black Catholics in the United States honors the many who sacrificed much in a Church that excluded blacks from the priesthood and religious life for many years. Mea maxima culpa.
So today is a day to remember St. Peter Claver and to be thankful for his religious and priestly life. Today is a day to remember the efforts of so many black Catholics that have shaped the faith — Sister Thea Bowman, preacher and singer, Fr. Clarence Rivers, pastor and musician, James Lyke, bishop and guide, Jesuit J. Glen Murray, liturgist and priest in Washington DC, and Mr. Daniel Rudd, lay leader and journalist. Today is a day to thank God for the scholarly work of African American theologians — M. Shawn Copeland and Fr. Bryan N. Massingale, past presidents of the Catholic Theological Society of America, Sister Jamie Phelps in New Orleans and Bp Wilton Gregory in Atlanta. Today is a day to cherish black and white Catholics and the legacy of St. Peter Claver.
Fr. John J. O’Brien is a Passionist priest who teaches and preaches, studies and writes, and ministers in area parishes and prisons in Framingham MA.
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