Blessed are the peacemakers Matthew 5,1....

« Blessed are the peacemakers........................... »

Peace is not the absence of a state of war, as most people think, or
     When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain,
    and after he had sat down, his disciples di lui came to him.. at least it's not just that. The peace that Jesus wants consists in that state of mind of an individual person, at peace with himself and others, and who knows how to remain such - may God assist us - even during a war.
If we read the Gospel well, we will clearly understand that Jesus teaching is always individual, that is, addressed to me, to you, to the single individual who then, living and working in his own environment, transmits its spirituality and meaning to others.
Therefore the state of peace that each of us should seek first is the one most within our reach, that of our ordinary life.
Personally I think that Jesus, by declaring blessed are the peacemakers - originally it was said: THE PEACEFULS - first of all asks us for peace and harmony to be achieved among the members of our family.
In other words, all of us who place ourselves in the perspective of service to others in the community in which we live, will be peacemakers when forgetting ourselves for others, in the right order.
Jesus asks us to do it selflessly, without expecting to be reciprocated, even if then usually we will often be.

There are also people who voluntarily do their best for others, for example they go to the streets at night to assist the poor and the homeless, or those who take care of a lonely or sick relative or friend for free and without any personal advantage.
Then the love of neighbor that Jesus asks of one of us ordinary Christians who do not have or cannot afford similar opportunities for a heroic life, but who every day, as is said, we pull along, is different.
We must try to achieve PEACE and harmony first in our family and then with solidarity and friendship between work colleagues and other friends.
In fact, among hatred and rivalries we should live very badly, and then bad feelings would follow us everywhere, they always follow us, and it is difficult to get rid of them.

Often in the past, when they were more fashionable, we saw marches of large numbers of people, marching to demonstrate for peace.
Then in reality it was found that the motivations of many of them were very different, for example they were taking the opportunity for a nice trip and going to eat a tasty Norcia sausage on the grill with a glass of red; or even especially for certain politicians the intentions were directed 'against' someone; and as always happens in certain 'peace marches' or similia, I believe that in large part they were also a fiction.
I judge such manifestations to be a fiction because in the end very few did the only thing that mattered most: going to Mass and praying to the Lord God for peace.

JESUS AND PEACE in the proper sense: Gospel according to Luke 7,1-10.

 Jesus is asked for help by an appointee of the Capernaum Centurion I have already covered this in other articles. However, I would like to point out that Jesus does not despise those who honestly defend peace. In the Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Luke 7: 1-10. it is described as the Jews of Capernaum even 'recommend' to Jesus a person whom today people ignorant of history or even in bad faith would call a grim 'occupying oppressor'.
I would also like to emphasize God's ADMIRATION for this powerful officer of the Roman imperial army:

• WHO TREATS HIS SLAVE HUMANLY, HE HAS AFFECTION FOR HIM. And he humbly asks Jesus for his healing.
• But at the same time proudly explains the exercise of iron military discipline and efficiency that made the empire great and powerful.

The benevolence of Jesus towards those who do their duty well and honestly is almost touched here. Following Christ also means fulfilling one's duty as that Centurion did, and doing one's job in the best possible way, even when it comes to using weapons efficiently and effectively for the defense of one's homeland, without losing humanity, like that Centurion, Roman Citizen from the first century.
Maintaining PEACE OF THE SOUL, and be proud of being able to do so it does take STRENGTH and the ability to suffer and sacrifice, and this was almost never lacking in the imperial army. Today the human virtues seem to be outdated, or so the MEDIA AND PROPAGANDA show.
We pray to God that they come back otherwise they will be ... bitter troubles.

Commentary's End

HISTORICAL NOTE on the ancient Romans. Forced to defend the city and the borders of the allied or administered populations by the continuous and persistent external aggressions of Africans, Greeks, Celts, Germanic populations, and oriental barbarians of all sorts, they ended up becoming peacemakers, civilizers of the world, so much so that Jesus Christ made the new 'chosen people'.
   Ist century: Legion's soldier

Rome was forced to struggle to survive from the earliest days, and created not only the best organized state, but also a military machine that no one resists, because no other army is equipped with its secret weapons: organization, stoicism, and discipline.
On the march the soldiers drink a mixture of water and vinegar - just what was offered to Jesus dying on the cross.
At each stop fields are fortified and guarded with strict rigor, in battle there are precise rules that everyone observes until death, whatever happens.
         Ist century: Centurion::.To these virtues is added the technological superiority of weapons, which are often manufactured by the legionaries themselves. During military campaigns, the opponent's behavior and equipment are also observed and possible improvements are adopted: for example in the first century the Parthian powerful long-range bows.
Their long range arrows in fact in the first clashes prevented the legionaries from coming into physical contact with the enemy, and therefore were the reason why the consul Crassus, at the time of Julius Caesar, left his skin in the parthian desert.
Even the dense network of roads - more than half a million kilometers - that allowed fast communications by feet or carriage or on horseback to anyone wishing to travel, was built largely by legionaries, both during times of peace and for military campaigns. Let's forget the nonsense that has been said and still said about the Ancient Romans, either out of political interests or dislikes or other, or because the usually distorted fantasies of the uneducated screenwriters of Hollywood colossals.
It does not seem plausible or even possible that Europe and the ancient Western world have been Romanized always with violence.
The Western world of the time, as the various peoples of the outside clashing or coming into contact with the Romans, chose and voluntarily adopted the Greco-Roman civilization and the law of Rome. In addition to the law, customs and learning to civil buildings were adopted.
Aqueducts, roads, sewage systems, civil constructions, and the basic corpus iuris belong to the Romans. The Romans also brought aqueducts, roads, sewage systems to the Greeks and in exchange they integrated and assimilated the ancient culture. Even in vices, unfortunately.
As a Christian I think that the western Roman Empire fell about four hundred years after Christ because its function was finished: that is, of allowing the rapid propagation of Christian doctrine in the Romanized world.

SHORT IMPERIAL EXCURSUS

the Western world has chosen to be such, so much so that we Westerners write almost all with an alphabet derived from Latin, we divide the day into 24 hours (12 X 2), and the names of the MONTHS of the CALENDAR are Roman. For example, some are called with a number eg. October November December; others with the name of the major Roman noble families, July (Julius), June (Junius), names of gods of the Roman pantheon, etc.
Almost all if not the totality of today's European cities in Spain, France, England, West Germany, etc. were founded by the ancient Romans.
Our current calendar no longer starts from the foundation of Rome, but from about the year of Christ's birth, conventionally set for December 25, the day of the 'Sol Invictus', when the sun has reached its minimum and begins to rise again.
Our calendar derives from that Julian - of Julius Caesar - reformed by Pope Gregory XIII, who introduced the change on October 4, 1582.
In the Anglo-Saxon world foot, inch and mile, are still used, the measures of Roman origin, and many of us also know how to write Roman numerals.

The emperor MARCUS AURELIUS. The statue survived
the Christians fanaticism because it was believed
to belong to the Emperor Constantine.
The others ancient emperors statues were melted
to obtain bronze or lime.

The empire began to decline towards the end of the second century when the plague arrived, brought by a large mass of persian invaders, parts and other Eastern tribes, Afghan and Indian, german savages, Huns and Mongolian militias attempting to breach borders to plunder Palestine, current Turkey and Syria; and perhaps even trying to violate what is the current Hungarian border.
Emperor Marcus Aurelius, born in Rome, April 26, 121 - the one in the famous movie - who spent most of his life in war defending the borders of the Empire, even then managed to stop and destroy some invading people, but the plague spread among the troops, and he too died, in Vienna, March 17, 180.
After the war, coming home to their respective european regions, the legionaries therefore brought the plague contracted by the invaders, a disease that killed more than 30% of the inhabitants of the old continent, undermining it's economy and military capacity..

Memory of this tragedy remains in the stories of the numerous historians of the time and subsequent centuries.
The Empire was also weakened by other similar epidemics from the east due to trades with India and China, and lasted another scarce two hundred years after the emperor pictured here upside.
The Eastern Roman Empire, on the other hand, still survived, and officially fell a thousand years later, in 1452, demolished by those who are today the Turks. CONSTANTINOPLE BECAME ISTAMBUL AND THE BASILICA OF 'SANTA SOFIA' WAS TRANSFORMED INTO today's MOSQUE.

BECAUSE ITALY WAS DIVIDED INTO SMALLEST STATES UNTIL THE 19TH CENTURY.
After Constantine, Italy became like any other province of the empire and the capital was no longer Rome, was moved to Milan and then to Ravenna, a city which was therefore judged safer because it was surrounded by swamps.
The empire had fallen into the crush of numerous and contemporary invasions of barbarians of all kinds in all areas of Europe, Asia, and Africa. The loss by Vandals of the rich Africa's provinces and many others too, no longer allowed the mercenary militias to be maintained and despite the intervention of the Eastern Empire and the valor of the Roman-Germanic generals, everything fell apart in a heap of ruins.
Rome was demolished and razed to the ground in 455 AD. because the Vandals of Genseric coming from Norther Africa, and rapidly decayed becoming a heap of ruins inhabited to a few tens of thousands of inhabitants from millions that were before.

However Italy could not unify and become a nation until the nineteenth century due to the physical presence of the papal power.
Using the spiritual power exploited for the purposes of their temporal power - the Popes always prevented the reunification of the peoples of the boot, opposing those who tried to achieve it, and failing to obtain it either.
For example, Pope Adrian I calling Charlemagne's Franks to eliminate them in the year 774, destroyed the Lombards kingdom which occupied the whole peninsula, and refused his authority.
In less distant years the papacy opposed with every means the emperors of the Holy ROMAN-GERMAN EMPIRE, for example Frederick I, called the RedBeard (Waiblingen, about 1122 - Saleph, June 10, 1190), and his nephew Frederick II, Frederick Roger of Hohenstaufen, (Jesi, December 26, 1194 - Fiorentino di Puglia, December 13, 1250), a great intellectual, polyglot and poet, who among other things was also the creator of the Italian vernacular.
He was excommunicated several times by the popes, the first one occurred when, going to the Middel East for a crusade against Saladin launched by the Pope of Rome, instead of attacking battle he agreed with him and stipulated a treaty of peace.
A certain friendship was born between him and the Saladin, based on the knowledge of mathematics and philosophy that engaged them in long and learned discussions.
Eventually the papacy prevailed. On Frederick's death, his sons paid dearly for it, and the dynasty died out.

USING A DOCUMENT PROVEN PLATEALLY FALSE ( demonstration by Lorenzo Valla ) - THAT IS, A COPY OF CONSTANTINE'S DONATION (º) - AND ASKING TO OVERRIDE EVERYONE, THE PAPACY HOSTED THE DISOBEDIENT EMPERORS AND FOMENTED STRUGGLES IN ITALY BETWEEN THE FACTIONS OF GUELFI AND GHIBELLINI.
  Medieval painting that represents Constantine who is
 submittted to Pope Sylvester? But when ever!
The document, which claims to be a copy of an edict of Constantine of 324 d.c. in fact, it mentions the city of Constantinople, which had not even been founded at the time (foundation act in 330 AD ), it mentions 'feuds' 'castles' and other medieval institutions that at the time wasn't existing, and claims that the papacy overrides the emperor also in what concerns temporal power.
Imagine if Constantine would never have allowed it. He was Emperor then the Pontifex Maximus, so that as such he called the council of Nicaea (355 d.c.).
The Popes, however, never managed to unify Italy under their command, because there were very powerful and industrious cities such as Venice that managed to defend against everyone, also against the Turks, or even the Florence of the Medici that in the Renaissance also expressed great Popes.
As a consequence of the the French Revolution's ideas and the reforms of Napoleon Bonaparte, and in spite of the restoration of 1815, progress advanced.
In the nineteenth century the papacy lost the temporal power in favor of the Piedmont's Kingdom, which finally unified the entire peninsula.

As a Christian I think that the Ancient Empire fell because its function was over: that is, to allow the rapid propagation of Christian doctrine in the Romanized and neighboring world.

(º) "Donation of Constantine", an apocryphal document (in other words: false) dating back to 324, with which the Roman emperor Constantine granted Pope Sylvester and his successors the primacy over the five patriarchates (Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria of Egypt, Antioch and Jerusalem) and attributed to the popes the imperial insignia and temporal sovereignty over Rome, Italy and the entire Roman Empire. Even the historical events of the following centuries demonstrated the falsity of this papacy claims.

  No fear! the Mercy of Jesus
  is INFINITE