Pilgr-image 11 - Peacemakers
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. – Matthew 5:9
Instead of loving what you think is peace, love other people, and love God above all. And instead of hating the people you think are warmakers, hate the appetites and the disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed – but hate these things in yourself first, not in another. – Thomas Merton
So, let’s play with this beatitude a little bit…if peacemakers are blessed and are therefore called children of God, does that mean that someone who isn’t a peacemaker isn’t a child of God? Doesn’t that go against a core idea of the faith that all people are created in the image of God and therefore are children of God, no matter how far they stray from the path? Or is there something else here?
Let’s take a little tangent and think about children and parents. What makes a child look like their parents? Is it only the physical characteristics or is it how children pick up on ways of speaking, ways of acting, or on other aspects of how their parent(s) engage the world? It is definitely some kind of indecipherable mystery of how all of these things interact but a resemblance definitely can emerge between a child and a caregiver.
Maybe that’s part of what Jesus is getting at here – not that some are excluded as children of God, but instead that by seeking to live as people of peace (and see the next reflection about what “peace” may mean) we reflect God to the world. When we are peacemakers, we are recognized by others as ones who most look like God. So, every step toward bringing peace is an act of reflecting God to the world.