“Blessed
are the peacemakers for they shall be called children of God.” I have been sitting with this beatitude
lately and reconsidering what it means to be a peacemaker. Married life
provides plenty of opportunities for peacemaking because conflicts always seem
to arise even in the happiest marriages. My natural inclination has always been
to avoid conflict, and I used to think that the goal of life was to prevent
conflict – then there would be peace. Therefore the presence of conflict in my
marriage or in my family or in my classroom was a sign of failure on my part.
Then on
Catholic Radio a few months ago, I heard a program that shared this idea: The
peace of Christ is different from the world’s peace. Jesus says, “Peace I leave
with you; my peace I give you. Not as the world gives do I give to you.” (John
14:27) The difference is this: although the world defines peace as the absence
of conflict, Christ defines peace as the ability to rise above conflict. Jesus
did not avoid conflict, but rather walked right into the midst of it, and in
doing so he transformed the cross from a curse to a blessing.
A few
nights after I heard that program, I attended a seminar for married couples at
Holy Infant called “Fighting the Good Fight,” where the presenter emphasized
the truth that conflict is not necessarily a bad thing; in fact, he even went
so far as to say that without conflict there could be no intimacy since the act
of solving conflicts builds community while avoiding conflict creates distance.
Conflict shows that we actually care about something or someone enough to speak
up.
That
was a completely new thought to me. Conflict is a good thing? I could
practically feel God rearranging my brain cells. I almost didn’t go to the
seminar because even its title was threatening to me – I didn’t want to fight,
at all, ever. Why would I want to listen to someone talk about fighting? I
would rather avoid the entire topic. But I’m really glad Jim and I went. I’m
coming to see that I do not need to fear conflict, that being a peacemaker
(God’s way) involves the courage to admit that there are differences among us
and that by working through our differences we can actually become more intimately
connected to one another.
This is
the fundamental message that I want to convey: it is the process of working
through our differences that will ultimately bind us together in love. Instead
of avoiding conflict by ignoring the disagreements and misunderstandings that
simmer below the surface; instead of worrying that your marriage is in trouble
because you and spouse don’t always agree about everything; instead of judging
the goodness of your marriage by the presence or absence of conflict: instead
of any of these misguided understandings of conflict, we need to become true
peacemakers. We need to courageously acknowledge conflict, to really listen to
the other’s viewpoint, and to allow the process of working through differences
to draw us more intimately into relationship with one another. “Blessed are the
peacemakers for they shall be called children of God.”
-Debbi St. Louis
