Feast day: October 18

St. Luke the Evangelist

Evangelist · 1st century

Patron of Physicians, painters, artists

'The beloved physician,' Gentile companion of Paul, author of the Gospel of Luke and Acts — together about a quarter of the New Testament.

Luke was, by the constant tradition of the Church, a Gentile by birth and a physician by training — St. Paul calls him 'the beloved physician.' Unlike the other evangelists he had not known Jesus in the flesh; he came to the faith as a convert and became a devoted companion of St. Paul, accompanying him on his missionary journeys and remaining with him even in his final imprisonment, when others had deserted him.

He is the author of two books of the New Testament — the third Gospel and its sequel, the Acts of the Apostles — which together form the largest single contribution to the New Testament by any one writer. A careful and graceful writer, he tells us at the outset that he investigated everything carefully from the beginning so as to set down an orderly account, drawing on eyewitnesses.

To Luke we owe some of the most treasured passages in all of Scripture: much of the story of Jesus' birth, including the Annunciation, the Visitation, and the song of Mary, the Magnificat; and parables found nowhere else, such as the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son. His Gospel is especially the Gospel of mercy, of the poor, of women, and of God's tenderness toward the lost.

The Acts of the Apostles, with its vivid 'we' passages where Luke himself was present, is our chief history of the early Church and the missionary journeys of Paul. A later tradition honors him as a painter of the Virgin, making him a patron of artists as well as of physicians; his symbol is the ox, for his Gospel opens with the temple sacrifice.

A doctor wrote more of the New Testament by volume than any other single author except Paul — and gave us the only accounts of the Annunciation, the Prodigal Son, and the Good Samaritan.

Image: COPTS (CC BY-SA 3.0), via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/09420a.htm