The Sermon on the Mount (Bossuet)/Day 8
Eighth Day
SEVENTH BEATITUDE
To be Peace-makers. — Matt. v. 9.
BLESSED are the peace-makers, for they shall be called the children of God.’ God is called ‘the God of Peace.’ [1] He ‘ maketh men of one manner to dwell in a house,’ [2] says the Psalmist. His goodness brings all things together. He has built up this world of materials most discordant with each other in kind and quality; He makes night and day, summer and winter, heat and cold- — and so with all the rest — co-operate for the right maintenance of the universe and the preservation of the human race. He admits His enemies to His Peace; and Jesus Christ says that, after His own example, you ‘ must love your enemies and do good to them that hate you.’ Further, you ‘must pray for them that persecute you, that you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven, who maketh his sun to rise on the good and the bad, and raineth on the just and the unjust,’ [3] as we shall see afterwards. ‘ Blessed,’ then, ' are the peaceable ’ — those who love peace and promote it — ‘they shall be called the children of God,’ because they will bear the character of so good a Father.
In lands where God is unknown, the sun is no dimmer, the rain waters the fields and pastures no less abundantly, and is no less refreshing or fertilising, than in Christian lands. Thus, as St Paul said, ' God left not himself without testimony.’ [4] The sun, when it rises, bears witness to His all-embracing goodness, for it appears no later, nor with any less brilliant colours, for the enemies of God than for His friends. Do you, then, at sunrise adore the God of pardon; and never show an ungracious countenance to your neighbour when the heavens, and God himself — if one may say so — look on him with such a gentle and serene one.
Jesus Christ, only Son of the Heavenly Father, is the great Peace-maker: — ' killing all enmities in himself... preaching peace to you that were afar off, and to them that were nigh'; [5] and ‘ making peace through the blood of his cross, both as to the things on earth and the things that are in heaven,’ [6] as St Paul says.
After the example of this only Son, the children of adoption must take on them the character of their Father, and show themselves true sons of God by their love of peace.
This grace of being children of God will have its perfect fulfilment in heaven, according to our Lord’s saying that they ' are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection,’ — that is, born anew by the resurrection. [7]
Let us then be truly peace-makers; let us always have on our lips words of forgiveness and peace to soften the bitterness that our brethren may display towards ourselves or towards others. Let us even do our best to bring together those who are on bad terms; to prevent enmities, coolnesses, indifference; in short, to reconcile all who are divided. This is to do the work of God, and to show ourselves His children by imitating His goodness.
How far from this spirit are people who like to fall out with each other; who, when their neighbours are already disturbed and weakened with angry feeling, add to their irritation by encouraging misunderstandings: — often entirely unfounded; and often increased by exaggerating circumstances, by saying what should be left unsaid and so reviving the remembrance of what should be forgotten, or by the utterance of sharp and contemptuous words.