Tonight we are gathering to discuss the penultimate beatitude – Blessed are the Peacemakers for they shall be called children of God. The questions in John Stott’s The Beatitudes: Developing Spiritual Character will provide us with the outline of our discussions. Please take the time to review these.
Attached is St. Gregory of Nyssa’s Sermon on this beatitude. Gregory observes that the beatitudes are the like the holy Tabernacle built by Moses in the desert, and this beatitude is the Holy of Holies where God himself dwells, for the promise is that we become children of God. This is the greatest of the beatitudes, for to be a peacemaker is to be adopted as the child of God. At the outset, Gregory speaks of the necessity of peace for the enjoyment of the blessings of this life. p.157. For peace is the greatest of the joy-giving things. p.158. Gregory defines peace as nothing short of having a loving disposition towards one’s neighbor. For the absence of peace is wrath, anger, envy, resentment, and hypocrisy. p.159. Therefore, the work of being a peacemaker is to “cast out hatred and abolish war, to exterminate envy and banish strife, to take away hypocrisy and extinguish from within the resentment of injuries shouldering the heart.” p.164. If you have time today, I commit this sermon to you.
Dinner is at 6. The menu is gourmet macaroni and cheese. Discussion about 6:45. Please bring a friend. Hope to see you here.
Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and patience, forbearing one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful.
Colossians 3:12-14