Blessed are the Peacemakers
We find ourselves in the early days of the Easter Season. With the grief of Holy Week still in our peripheral view, we are nevertheless invited into these fifty days of sustained – at times “persistent in spite of” – joy. Today Jesus’ voice is singing His familiar leitmotif of peace.
While never intimidated by questioning unjust systems, Jesus is Peace. The infant Jesus opens the veil between earth and heaven as the Prince of Peace. The Rabbi preaches “Peacemaking” on a crowded mountain and names those willing to do that holy work “Blessed.” The Suffering Servant promises peace amidst tribulation on the eve of His own crucifixion. In victory over death, Jesus chooses the gift of peace for His dearest friends as a defining identity and lineage of the Christian people. Even now, before Christ is sacrificed on the Eucharistic table, each and every time, we exchange peace with one another to prepare ourselves to receive the greatest gift of life.
Where God is love, the Gospel shows us, Christ is peace. The aroma of Jesus is peace. It precedes His arrival and lingers in the air after His departure.
As children we all prayed for “peace on earth” as if it could fall over humanity like a warm blanket; simplistic peace, cost-free peace, peace that is so compelling it leaves no community or culture behind. With adulthood came the knowledge that every ceasefire is painfully fragile and no lasting peace is achieved without significant cost.
In the Upper Room, with wounded hands and still-open side, Jesus offers a costly gift of peace. It is peace offered to those who’d locked the doors, to those who’d abandoned Him and to those who’d denied Him. He offered peace to those who wept bitterly under His nailed feet and found themselves bereft at an empty tomb, peace to those who preached as they were commanded and who were deemed unreliable witnesses. He offered peace to those who did not and would not believe unless they had proof. It was a costly peace, void of any self-interest; a peace that only Jesus could give, but give, He did.
Despite this gift, we can’t escape the anguished cries for peace today. It’s the inescapable refrain on every radio, television and social media outlet. Our Holy Father, Pope Leo, in his Easter message Urbi et Orbi implored, “Let those who have weapons lay them down,” to choose “encounter over domination;” and for “those who have power to unleash wars” to choose peace. We sit as helpless witnesses to the crescendo of direct military action, the threat of targeted civilian casualties, and increasingly dehumanizing rhetoric meant to justify unspeakable tactics. Peace doesn’t just seem elusive; it seems antithetical to the strategy.
Peace in our homes and hearts feels even more unattainable. While we cling to the world’s polarizing ideologies with white knuckles, wrestling to be “right” rather than peacemakers, the drumbeat of hopelessness becomes the only thing that unites us. We forget Jesus’ paramount gift for us in that upper room.
As followers of Jesus, schooled in the Beatitudes, we have to ask ourselves: where is Christ’s aroma of peace in our midst? Is our pride too high a price to pay? Is our dominance too costly to sacrifice? Is our loss of control a wound we are unwilling to endure? Our Lord submitted to all three as the price of the gift of peace. He breathed over each of us the gift we are each denying in our own way.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called “Children of God.” (Matthew 5:9)
Perhaps to be a peacemaker is not only what we do, but who we are; a mark of belonging to Love itself. To bear the marks of a costly sacrifice, we must take on the aroma of Jesus’ peace. A peacemaker breathes peace at any cost, and in so doing, is claimed as God’s child.
Our time is calling us to be radicalized by peace, starting in our own hearts. It’s calling us to refuse the lure of self-righteousness and to accept Christ’s gift of peace. This time is reminding us that peacemaking is an embedded and indivisible Christian philosophy and sociology. To be Children of God is to be marked by the irrefutable, unrelenting, and costly signs of peacemaking.
Kelly Meraw is the Director of Liturgy, Music, and Pastoral Care for St. John – St. Paul Collaborative in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Kelly earned her Master’s Degree from McGill University, where during her undergraduate studies, she was received into the Catholic Church through the RCIA program at St. Patrick’s Basilica in Montreal, Canada. Kelly brings her deep love of scripture, liturgy, music, and devotion to Church teaching and tradition to her ministry.
In her parishes she leads bible studies; organizes faith sharing circles and social justice initiatives; leads communion, wake and committal services; offers adult faith enrichment programming; and shepherds bereavement ministries.
Currently she finds the undeniable movements of the Holy Spirit and great hope in the process of living as a deeply listening Church. After this first session of the Synod on Synodality she will continue to engage in the communal discernment process offering fulsome and inclusive ways to serve the Church’s current Synod.
