Pedro Claver y Corberó (1580-1654) spent the many decades of his life working against the laws and social morés that enabled and perpetuated the West African slave trade in his native Spain. The Jesuit priest spent his heart and soul ministering to the enslaved women and men whom he would meet when he went to board the ships in the harbor at Cartagena.
He brought them whatever food or medicine or clothing he could. But more deeply, he labored to share with these children of God the truth of their human dignity, their beauty, their immeasurable worth, and their belovedness to God—the truth that others had brutally, violently disfigured. He didn't see them only once: Claver followed up with all those that he could, endeavoring to secure their Christian and civil rights.
Claver vehemently opposed the slave trade not only with his preaching, but especially in his friendship to the enslaved: "We must speak to others with our hands before we speak to them with our lips."
Maybe someday in Heaven, you and I (God willing) will meet the 300,000 enslaved people that Claver personally baptized. Maybe we'll get to listen while they share their stories. Their suffering will be threaded through, because God never erases our pain or dismisses our agony—He makes it into victory. Their stories will be victory stories. Triumph stories. Restoration stories. Eternal freedom stories. Love stories.
St Peter Claver’s feast is September 9.
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