And after Jesus was raised from the dead, the same power with which he had serenely mastered fear and sorrow and death, he now communicated to those who belonged to him.  How surely were the fears of the Apostles calmed in the Upper Room that Easter evening!  One moment they were cowering behind a locked door, their ears alert to catch the sound of footsteps on the stairs which could mean that their hide-out was discovered; and then the next moment, when Jesus stood in their midst with his Easter greeting, “Peace be with you”, the whole atmosphere was transformed.  For the first time they knew that peace which he had promised them, not the external peace which the world is ever seeking, but an inner serenity of soul.

That inner peace has been the peculiar possession of the faithful Christian, especially in times of persecution.  So in the early days of the Church, when the Christians went in constant peril of their lives, the Sunday Eucharist began with the Risen Lord’s greeting to his own, “Peace be with you”.  And true it was that those hunted people were filled with a tranquillity that was unknown anywhere else in the Roman Empire.