Blessed Are the Peacemakers

The Colt Peacemaker.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

This is one of the most popular of the Beatitudes, but one over which there is much debate.

What exactly is a “peacemaker”?

I have some personal interest. An old census entry shows that some of my Irish ancestors were “peasemakers.”

My own guess is that this meant they made pea porridge.

The more distant listeners in Life of Brian hear it as “blessed are the cheesemakers.”

It is not, surely, a question of avoiding war—of pacifism. That, at best, is not “making” peace, but keeping it. And generally not really even that. The object lesson is Neville Chamberlain returning from Munich declaring “peace in our time.” Peace in our time is often bought at the price of worse war in good time.

Nor does it tend to fit the winners of the Nobel “Peace” Prize who earn it by negotiating a peace in an ongoing war. Because, inevitably, they are the same people who fought that war, and, inevitably, one or both of them is guilty of warmongering. There is no great boon to mankind in making peace if you made the war.

So what counts as actually “making” peace?

In Jesus’s time, the term “peacemaker” was most often applied to the better Roman emperors, on the grounds that they were responsible for the general peace: Pax Romana. Police are called “peace officers” for the same reason. You may say that they only preserve the peace, but they really do more than that: they prevent crime and violence by their presence.

It has to do, perhaps, with governing or acting justly, and justly resolving disputes, without fear or favour, in such a way that resentments and ill feelings are not aroused. The core idea is perhaps found in the Canadian constitutional phrase, “peace, order, and good government.”

It requires fairmindedness, and courage.