Calendar Class of September 9, 2025

A Carpe Diem Snapshot:

Carpe Hortum! Yesterday evening, my mother, sisters, and I enjoyed a home-cooked Italian meal in the incredible backyard garden of our friend Bernie, who transformed a bare piece of land into a private paradise for intimate gatherings like this one. The front lawn, by contrast, is a large open lawn where Bernie is building a small stage to host concerts and other forms of performance arts that will be open to the neighborhood. What a beautiful space- and life- he is cultivating, both for himself and his community!

Liturgical: Tuesday of the 23rd Week of Ordinary Time

Colossians 2:6-15

As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority. In him also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by putting off the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ; when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it.

From today's Gospel reflections by Bishop Barron:

We are made for love and connection and justice and nonviolence, but at every turn and in every way we are twisted in the direction of hatred, separation, injustice, and violence. We are, as St. Augustine put it, wandering in the land of dissimilitude and in the grip of the libido dominandi. The contemporary philosopher René Girard has reminded us that all of our social arrangements are marked by scapegoating and oppression. 

The human race is best characterized as a dysfunctional spiritual family, all of us having been marked from birth by the effects of sin. Sin has found its way into every aspect of human life, personally and institutionally. We would be hopelessly naïve to think otherwise.

And so we need not just a philosopher or social theorist or political activist or military hero but a savior, someone who can break into our dysfunction from the outside and heal us.

Sanctoral: Peter Claver (June 26, 1581 – September 8, 1654)

A native of Spain, young Jesuit Saint Peter Claver left his homeland forever in 1610 to be a missionary in the colonies of the New World. He sailed into Cartagena, a rich port city washed by the Caribbean. He was ordained there in 1615.

By this time the slave trade had been established in the Americas for nearly 100 years, and Cartagena was a chief center for it. Ten thousand slaves poured into the port each year after crossing the Atlantic from West Africa under conditions so foul and inhuman that an estimated one-third of the passengers died in transit. Although the practice of slave-trading was condemned by Pope Paul III and later labeled “supreme villainy” by Pope Pius IX, it continued to flourish.

Saint Peter Claver’s predecessor, Jesuit Father Alfonso de Sandoval, had devoted himself to the service of the slaves for 40 years before Claver arrived to continue his work, declaring himself “the slave of the Negroes forever.”

As soon as a slave ship entered the port, Peter Claver moved into its infested hold to minister to the ill-treated and exhausted passengers. After the slaves were herded out of the ship like chained animals and shut up in nearby yards to be gazed at by the crowds, Claver plunged in among them with medicines, food, bread, brandy, lemons, and tobacco. With the help of interpreters he gave basic instructions and assured his brothers and sisters of their human dignity and God’s love. During the 40 years of his ministry, Claver instructed and baptized an estimated 300,000 slaves.

Saint Peter Claver’s apostolate extended beyond his care for slaves. He became a moral force, indeed, the apostle of Cartagena. He preached in the city square, gave missions to sailors and traders as well as country missions, during which he avoided, when possible, the hospitality of the planters and owners and lodged in the slave quarters instead.

After four years of sickness, which forced the saint to remain inactive and largely neglected, Saint Peter Claver died on September 8, 1654. The city magistrates, who had previously frowned at his solicitude for the black outcasts, ordered that he should be buried at public expense and with great pomp.

Peter Claver was canonized in 1888, and Pope Leo XIII declared him the worldwide patron of missionary work among black slaves.

Human: Continental Congress declared “United States of America” would be the name of the new nation – 1776; Birth of Leo Tolstoy (author) – 1828; Queen Elizabeth II became the longest-reigning monarch in Britain’s history – 2015

Natural: How do walkie-talkies work? (We used them at the festival and, when a stranger spoke to us on "our line" we started asking questions about the science behind it and all the invisible electromagnetic and sound waves surrounding us)

Italian: Etichetta (label / tag)

A term used to indicate “good manners” in many languages across Europe is etiquette, such as the Italian etichetta, the Spanish etiqueta and the French étiquette. It can be traced back to the old French estiquier / estiquer, meaning “to drive, affix, attach”.

Owing to the addition of the diminutive suffix -etta in Italian, the word took on the additional meaning of “little thing attached” and today is used more frequently to indicate a label or tag applied to various goods to indicate quality, price, content and origin.

Quote: "Seek God in all things, and we shall find Him by our side."

- St. Peter Claver