Blessed are the Peace-Makers

Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph Column on 11 July 2010
Blessed are the Peace-Makers

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
11 July 2010

John Lennon was the best known of the Beatles, who once claimed they were better known than Jesus Christ.

Times have changed. Today it is golden oldies like myself who are more likely to remember their triumphs.

The Beatles had more than a touch of genius, but they did a lot of moral damage with their "anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-conventional, anti-capitalistic" secular hymns (Lennon's own description).

In the popular piece "Imagine" Lennon urged his listeners to dream of a world where there was no heaven, no hell, no religion, no country, "nothing to kill or die for". Lennon was working for a peace resulting from the disappearance of religion.

We are gathering some of the fruits of his mistaken teaching today with broken families, drug-taking, increasing venereal disease, youth suicides. Rejecting the Ten Commandments, abandoning self discipline does not bring inner peace to individuals and weakens or destroys the peace and harmony in society.

In his beatitude Christ did not commend those with a naturally peaceful disposition, those lucky few with a placid and kindly nature, usually fostered in good loving families. Such people are truly blessed, but Christ blessed the peace-makers. They will be called children of God.

Without God, society moves closer and closer to hell on earth. As one atheist wrote "hell is other people". The Communist Russia of Lenin and Stalin and Mao's Communist China were only sustained by lies and official violence, not by the consent of peaceful citizens.

Peace is the calm that comes from proper order and St. Augustine told us that our hearts are always uneasy until they rest in God. A flaw runs through each human heart and we only find peace by governing our selfish impulses and carnal desires. Lust is not the same as love, any more than greed is good.

Hatred never brings peace of heart, because peace-making is an act of mercy, which sets aside wrongs and returns good for evil.

This is not easy. The early Christian writers insisted that we must have interior peace before we can pass it to others and that only God gives this peace.

The one true God is the source of eternal harmony, an ocean of peace.

Everyone wants to make peace, but when we reject God we are heading in the wrong direction.