“Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.”
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Peacemakers actively work to reconcile what is broken — between God and humanity, between human beings, between communities. The Hebrew shalom is more than the absence of conflict: it is the comprehensive flourishing of right relationship in every dimension of life. Romans 5:10–11 says we are reconciled to God through Christ's death and have the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18–19). The sons of God designation is the most elevated in the Beatitudes: the peacemakers share in the work of the one who is called Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6) and who reconciled humanity to God through the cross (Colossians 1:20). They shall be called sons of God — the calling is the recognition of what they have become through participation in God's own reconciling work.
Church Fathers on Matthew 5:9
When you have made your inward parts clean from every spot of sin, that dissentions and contentions may not proceed from your temper, begin peace within yourself, that so you may extend it to others.
Peace is the fixedness of order; by order, I mean an arrangement of things like and unlike giving to each its own place. And as there is no man who would not willingly have joy, so is there no man who would not have peace; since even those who go to war desire nothing more than by war to come to a glorious peace.
The peacemakers [margin note: pacifici] are pronounced blessed, they namely who make peace first within their own hearts, then between brethren at variance. For what avails it to make peace between others, while in your own heart are wars of rebellious vices.