Abiding inner peace is an apparently elusive state and, typically, whatever peace does momentarily settle in our unsettled hearts is all too easily disturbed by people and circumstances outside ourselves. Accordingly, when in a state of inner peace, we encounter someone who is aggressive, angry, or irritated, our peace which was perhaps radiating from us, does not survive the encounter and (contrary to Jesus’ injunction) does not return to us. Instead, the other’s negative and disturbed state of mind and heart invades our hearts and destroys our earlier inner peace. In this we are unlike Saint Paul whose inner peace remained undisturbed even by the malice of Alexander the coppersmith, or by those brothers who deserted him at the first hearing of his trial. He was able to respond in this way, not because he had developed a “thick skin” impervious to insult and hurt, but because he had reached that blessed state when (to use his own words) I no longer live but Christ lives in me. And it was his beloved Lord, whose presence completely filled his heart, that made Paul’s inner peace a permanent state. In us, by contrast, Christ is expected to find space within our cluttered and divided hearts in which we still seek peace and contentment in the passing things of this world—things that sometimes drive him from our hearts. May the holy physician, Saint Luke, thus intercede for us in our efforts towards that purity of heart in which Christ reigns as Lord and King and bestows that peace and joy that no one can take from us.