4 Steps to Be a Peacemaker

In the Beatitudes, among others, Jesus commends the peacemakers, “for they shall be called sons of God” (Matt. 5:9).

Becoming and being a peacemaker is toward the end of our spiritual journey. Therefore, we should not be anxious if we are not able to be peacemakers right from the beginning of our own conversion. Weightlifters do not expect to lift the heaviest weights at the beginning of their training, but at the end. So too, we must recognize that being able to establish peace among others requires great maturity in the spiritual life.

That being said, there are four major steps in order to become a peacemaker.

1. Establish peace within ourselves.

If we are not at peace with ourselves, we will not be at peace with others. To be at peace within ourselves, we must establish right order in our souls, and this begins with truth. We must rightly understand the truths of the Faith and grow in wisdom. If our souls are filled with error and ignorance, we will not be able to tell what is right or wrong, or what is good or bad. Therefore, we must learn to love Scripture, and to be docile to the teaching of Christ and his apostles as transmitted through the Church. After this, we must put ourselves in a right relationship with God by confessing our sins and worshiping him as he has commanded. Finally, we must train our passions by keeping the commandments, mortification, and selfless choices. If our passions are not at peace and subject to our reason, we will not have peace within ourselves.

2. Patiently bear the burdens of others.

This step is recommended by St. Paul:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us have no self-conceit, no provoking of one another, no envy of one another. Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Look to yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ (Gal. 5:22-6:2).

Bearing one another’s burdens is indispensable for establishing peace. For if we are constantly agitated at the weaknesses of others and refuse to put up with them, we will begin to provoke fights by demanding of our brothers things that they are not always strong enough to accomplish. And although Jesus was always very harsh with those who committed sins from malice (such as the Pharisees), he was always very gentle with those who sinned from weakness or ignorance. St. Paul recommends this method with those whose faith is weak:

I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean. If your brother is being injured by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love. Do not let what you eat cause the ruin of one for whom Christ died. So do not let your good be spoken of as evil. For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. He who thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men. Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding. Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for anyone to make others fall by what he eats (Rom. 14:14-20).

The question is not who is right or wrong. It’s true that those whose faith was weak were wrong about the uncleanness of certain kinds of food. Yet Paul does not instruct the Romans to simply tell them that they are wrong and to get over it. Rather, he recommends that those whose faith is strong bear with the inconvenience of not eating certain foods so as not to scandalize the others. This is striking advice, since it manifests that in moral matters, it is not merely a question of what is the objective truth—but also whether or not we care about those who may be in error and whose error cannot be remedied immediately.

3. Fraternal correction.

The book of Proverbs teaches: “He who winks the eye causes trouble, but he who boldly reproves makes peace” (Prov. 10:10). Our Lord gives very concrete steps for offering fraternal correction, and St. Augustine, in his rule of life, amplifies and explains these steps.

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector (Matt. 18:5-17).

The first step in fraternal correction is that you should be a witness to or somehow certain of the sin. If you are not certain, it belongs to someone else to make the correction. The next step is to go to the person alone. For we should be very sensitive to preserving the good name of others. A good name is more valuable than gold or precious perfume (Prov. 22:1, Eccl. 7:1), so taking it away is worse than stealing. Indeed, even bad people deserve a good name among those whom they have not harmed or are not likely to harm.

Notice that in this step, the purpose is not to defend yourself, but rather to “gain your brother.” We correct the sins of others not because we are hurt, but because it is not good for them to sin. Therefore, fraternal correction is an act of love, and it should be done in such a way that the one being corrected can feel loved by the one correcting.

If he does not listen, the next step is to bring along two or three others. Sometimes a person will not admit that he has sinned because he simply disagrees with you about whether there was a sin in the first place. Or perhaps he cannot take a correction well because he has been hurt by you in the past and does not believe you are objective. By bringing witnesses, you introduce a measure of objectivity into the process.

Last of all, if the person will not accept the correction from two or three brethren, he should be brought before the authority of the whole Church, so that he might know for certain that his action was sinful and cannot be tolerated within the communion of the Church. Obviously, such cases should be serious: things like heresy or schism, or sins that make peace impossible within the Church such as public impurity, murder, theft, and so on. (Less serious matters—irascibility, talkativeness, laziness, etc.—often must be borne with.) If he will not repent even after this, he must be excluded from the communion of the Church. And this, too, is done from love, lest his contagious corruption ruin others.

Clearly, such fraternal correction presupposes that you are not guilty of the same or worse sins! Jesus himself warned,

Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother: “Let me take the speck out of your eye,” when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye (Matt. 7:3-5).

So, in summary, fraternal correction should be done 1) by one whose place it is to make the correction, 2) with love, and 3) without hypocrisy.

4. Forgiveness and reparation.

When someone sins against us or the common good, harm is done to us. The natural tendency is to harm him back so he knows firsthand what he has done to us and to others. But this is not how Jesus treated us. When Jesus saw humanity’s sins, he did not think first, “How can I hurt or punish them?” Rather, he thought, “How can I take their punishment upon myself to save and help them?” As St. Faustina observed, we should be more willing to do penance for the sins of others than to punish them.

There is an old saying: “Forgiveness means somebody takes the loss.” By forgiving and making reparation for the sins of others, we absorb in our own persons the evil others have done. Yet by this very act we are made holy and beautiful in God’s eyes. So we suffer no real loss and achieve great gains. Yet it requires great courage to endure so much pain without building a wall around our hearts to protect them. The hearts of Jesus and Mary are always depicted as wounded for precisely this reason.

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