A book nearly taken at the door, kept for forty years

SEVILLE, Spain, April 1610 AD — Saint Peter Claver sailed from Seville for the Indies in April 1610 AD. He was a young Jesuit and not yet a priest. In his luggage was a little book. The old doorkeeper of a Jesuit college had written it out for him by hand. It had nearly been taken from him at that college’s door.

St. Peter Claver had been sent to the college, on the island of Majorca, as a student in 1605 AD. Its doorkeeper was Saint Alonso Rodríguez. As soon as St. Peter Claver arrived, he went to find St. Alonso. He meant to kneel at the old man’s feet. St. Alonso tried to kneel to him at the same time. Neither would let the other kneel first, and the contest ended in a hug.

St. Peter Claver asked St. Alonso to teach him how to love Jesus Christ with his whole heart. He did not know how to begin. The man in charge of the college let them meet for an hour every day to talk about God. St. Peter Claver wrote down all that St. Alonso said.

Shortly before St. Peter Claver was due to leave the island, St. Alonso told him: “If the glory of God’s house concerns you, go to the Indies and save millions of these perishing souls.” St. Peter Claver wrote to the head of the Jesuits in his region, asking to be sent.

Stopped at the door

St. Peter Claver left Majorca in November 1608 AD. When they said goodbye, St. Alonso promised never to forget him in his prayers. St. Alonso also gave him some papers he had written out by hand. Among them was a small book about the good qualities a man in a religious order should have.

But the men in charge of the college had a rule. None of St. Alonso’s writings could leave it. That way, people would stop asking the old man for them all the time. The brother keeping the door that day told St. Peter Claver about the rule. He was about to take the papers away.

St. Peter Claver went back to St. Alonso. St. Alonso went straight to the man in charge and asked if he could give some of his writings to his student. His reason was that the young man would soon be going to the Indies, where books like these were hard to find. The man in charge agreed, and St. Peter Claver was allowed to take the little book.

Forty years with one little book

St. Peter Claver studied at Barcelona for almost two years first, asking all the time to go. After he sailed from Seville, he and his companions landed at Cartagena de Indias. It was the main slave market in the New World.

After some years of study farther inland, St. Peter Claver was sent back to Cartagena in November 1615 AD. He spent the rest of his life among the enslaved Africans brought into that port.

The little book went with him wherever he went, and he read it again and again. Once, when he was ill, he held it pressed to his chest as he received Viaticum. To the end of his life he called St. Alonso his holy master.

In 1651 AD St. Peter Claver was dying at Cartagena. His superiors gave him permission to give St. Alonso’s writings away. He had kept the little book for about forty years. He sent it to the Jesuit house at Tunja, where young Jesuits were trained. St. Peter Claver had once been the doorkeeper there too.

A letter dated October 28 went with the book. In it, St. Peter Claver wrote: “I send it to the noviciate, that the novices may profit by it, and that the novice-father may keep it carefully, as a treasure of which I myself have not known how to make good use.”

Then St. Peter Claver asked the book’s readers to pray for him: “I entreat of those who read it to pray to God for a sinner, who having such a precious mine at his disposal, instead of drawing from it the pure gold of sanctity, has collected nothing but its rust.”