Feast of St Luke the Evangelist: 18 October
St. Luke, the inspired author of the third Gospel and of the Acts of the Apostles, was a native of Antioch in Syria and a physician, and one of the early converts from paganism. He accompanied St. Paul on a considerable part of his missionary journey. He was also his companion while in prison at Rome on two different occasions. His account of these events, contained in the Acts, is firsthand history.
Luke’s Gospel is, above all, the Gospel of the Merciful Heart of Jesus. It emphasizes the fact that Christ is the salvation of all men, especially of the repentant sinner and of the lowly. Legend says that Luke painted the Blessed Virgin’s portrait. It is certainly true that he painted the most beautiful word-picture of Mary ever written.
St. Luke came from Antioch, was a practicing physician when he was converted by St. Paul. He attached himself to the Apostle and accompanied him on most of his missionary journeys and was still with him in Rome when St. Paul was in prison awaiting death. We hear no more of him afterwards and nothing is known of his last years.
Because of his closeness with St. Paul, Luke acquired the information about the life of the early Christian communities which he recorded in the Acts of the Apostles from St. Paul’s teaching and a study of all the traditionas of our Lord’s life. Luke wrote the third Gospel, which St. Jerome called “Paul’s Gospel.” To St. Luke’s Gospel we owe most of our knowledge of Christ’s childhood and some precious details about our Lady. He also preserved some of the most touching of our Lord’s parables, for example those of the lost sheep and the prodigal son. Dante styles him “The historican of Christ’s meekness.”
Among the four animals of Ezechiel’s vision, the ox represents St. Luke because the beginning of his Gospel mentions the priesthood of Zachary, and because oxen were sacrificed in the Old Law. The ox of Ezechiel’s vision, taken by Christian art as a symbol of the third Evangelist, recalls for us the stable of Bethlehem and the details of he hidden life which Mary pondered in her heart and Luke reveals to us in his Gospel.
St. Luke’s Gospel is principally concerned with salvation and mercy; in it are preserved some of our Lord’s most moving parables, like those of the lost sheep and the prodigal son. Dante calls St. Luke the “historian of the meekness of Christ.” It is also St. Luke who tells us the greater part of what we know about our Lord’s childhood.
St. Luke did not personally know our Lord, and like St. Mark, the author of the second Gospel, he is not included among the apostles. For this reason the Gospel chosen for their feast is the account of the sending forth of the seventy-two disciples. According to St. Jerome, St. Luke died in Achaia (Greece) at the age of 84, and it is unknown whether or not he died a martyr’s death. His name means “bringer of light” (= luke).
(Abridged from Catholic Culture https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/liturgicalyear/calendar/day.cfm?date=2021-10-18)