Lectio Divina — “Blessed”
Memorial of Saint Peter Claver, Priest
Day 9 of the Season of Creation
Lectio — Blessed
> “Blessed are you…”
— Luke 6:20
Jesus speaks the word blessed where I might least expect to hear it. Blessed are the poor, the hungry, those who weep, those who are hated. His Beatitudes turn my ordinary measurements upside down. What appears deprived may contain abundance; what looks prosperous may conceal poverty.
Saint Peter Claver entered precisely such a reversal. He encountered people whom the slave trade had stripped of freedom, dignity, health, family and even their names, yet he recognized in them something no human being could take away: the image of God.
So when Jesus says, “Blessed are you,” I must ask: Do I recognize blessing only when circumstances are comfortable, or can I discover it flowering where everything appears hostile to life?
Meditatio — Blessed
Right now at The Glenn, Pink Purslane is giving me an answer.
The drought and extreme heat have left much of the vegetation struggling. Yet this little plant seems almost to reverse the conditions around it. Where I expect brown, I discover pink. Where I expect something merely enduring the heat, I find something flowering in it.
I am blessed with Pink Purslane.
Saint Peter Claver makes me think of that flower. He did not make the horrors of slavery good any more than a flower makes drought good. Rather, in conditions profoundly contrary to human dignity, he chose to flower with mercy. He entered the ships and cared for people treated as cargo. He brought food, medicine, consolation and, above all, the recognition that the enslaved person before him was a human being beloved by God.
That challenges me during this Season of Creation because there are days when the heat, drought, depleted water resources, violence, division and uncertainty of our age make blessed seem like the wrong word.
But then I go to Mass.
There the direction of everything changes.
The soil produces grain. Human hands make bread. The bread reaches the altar. Creation itself is gathered into thanksgiving—Eucharistia—and offered back to the Creator. What came from God’s hands returns to God in blessed adoration, and in the Eucharist creation is already being drawn toward its ultimate fulfillment in Christ.
Perhaps Pink Purslane is preaching a tiny Beatitude at The Glenn:
Blessed am I when circumstances do not appear blessed, if those circumstances teach me to discover the God who has never stopped blessing creation.
Oratio — Blessed
Lord Jesus Christ,
You call blessed those whom the world so easily overlooks.
Give me the eyes of Saint Peter Claver,
that I may recognize Your image in every person,
especially in those whose dignity is ignored or violated.
When drought makes the earth seem barren,
let the Pink Purslane remind me that life can still flower.
When turbulent times tempt me to believe that I am not blessed,
bring me again to Your altar.
As bread and wine, fruits of the earth and work of human hands,
become the sacrament of Your presence,
teach me to see all creation moving toward You.
Saint Peter Claver,
servant of those whom others treated as possessions,
pray that I may never confuse prosperity with blessedness
or usefulness with dignity.
Make my life itself a blessing
to the poor, to creation, and to generations yet to come.
Amen.
Contemplatio — Blessed
The Pink Purslane also complicates my contemplation of artificial intelligence.
AI promises abundance: more information, more speed, more productivity, more efficiency. Those can indeed be blessed possibilities when they genuinely serve human beings and our common home. But the Beatitudes warn me against assuming that more automatically means blessed.
Behind something as seemingly immaterial as an AI response stands something remarkably material: computers, data centers, electrical grids, cooling systems, minerals, land and water. Digital technology never really escapes creation.
That becomes especially significant during a Season of Creation centered on Living Water.
If I rejoice because AI gives me an answer in seconds while remaining indifferent to the resources required to provide it, I risk accepting the technocratic illusion that technology somehow floats above the physical world. It does not. Like everything I do at The Glenn, it has consequences somewhere.
Saint Peter Claver adds an even sharper question. The slave economy of his age was efficient precisely because human beings had been reduced to resources. Modern technology must never repeat that logic—either with people or with creation. Efficiency cannot be the final measure of whether something is good.
The Pink Purslane suggests another measure.
It takes what is available in harsh conditions and produces a flower.
Perhaps that is what blessed technology should resemble: not technology that consumes simply because it can, but technology ordered toward flourishing—using human ingenuity while respecting human dignity, conserving water and energy, and leaving room for creation to flourish with us.
And when I approach the Eucharistic altar today, I can remember that the final destiny of creation is neither consumption nor computation.
It is communion.
Blessed am I when I receive creation as gift, use technology as a servant, and return both my work and this wounded but flowering world to God in thanksgiving.
Memorial of Saint Peter Claver, Priest
