TRINITY · 18 OCTOBER
Saint Luke the Evangelist
Evangelist & Physician · The Only Gentile New Testament Author · Companion of Paul · Author of Acts
Luke — LYOOK · Antioch — AN-tee-ok · Theophilus — thee-OF-ih-lus · Magnificat — mag-NIF-ih-kat · Benedictus — ben-eh-DIK-tus · Nunc Dimittis — nunk dih-MIT-iss · Boeotia — bee-OH-shuh
Almighty God, who didst inspire thy servant Luke the physician to set forth in the Gospel the love and healing power of thy Son; Graciously continue in thy Church this love and power to heal, to the praise and glory of thy Name; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
Luke (LYOOK) is the only Gentile author in the New Testament, and he is the one who tells us the most about the women, the poor, the outsiders, and the mercy that reaches beyond the boundaries of Israel’s covenant. He is a physician, Paul’s companion, the author of both the third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles — a two-volume work that together constitutes more of the New Testament by word count than any other single author. He almost certainly never met Jesus in the flesh: his prologue says plainly that he has compiled his account from the testimony of those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word, having carefully investigated everything from the beginning. He is the historian among the Evangelists, the one who situates the Gospel in the public history of the Roman world — who gives us the census and Quirinius and Pontius Pilate by name, who addresses his work to a named patron, Theophilus (thee-OF-ih-lus), with the formal dedication of a Hellenistic literary work. He writes the most beautiful Greek in the New Testament, and he writes it in the service of a Gospel whose central theme is mercy without limit.
The canticles of Luke’s infancy narrative are the Church’s daily prayer. The Magnificat (mag-NIF-ih-kat) — Mary’s song at the Visitation, preserved only in Luke — is the great canticle of Evening Prayer, sung every day in the Western liturgy for fifteen hundred years. The Benedictus (ben-eh-DIK-tus) — Zechariah’s prophecy over the newborn John, preserved only in Luke — is the great canticle of Morning Prayer that we sang in the Lauds service. The Nunc Dimittis (nunk dih-MIT-iss) — Simeon’s farewell in the Temple, preserved only in Luke — is the great canticle of Compline. These three canticles, which structure the Daily Office, exist only because Luke sought out the tradition of Mary and Zechariah and Simeon and set it down. And beyond the canticles: the Annunciation, the shepherds in the field, the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, Zacchaeus in the sycamore tree, the penitent thief on the cross, the road to Emmaus — all preserved only in Luke, all among the most beloved passages in the entire Gospel tradition. He is the Evangelist of mercy, of inclusion, of the Christ who came to seek and to save that which was lost.
His connection to Paul is the apostolic thread that ties his work to the eyewitness tradition. The we-passages in Acts — the sections where the narrative shifts suddenly from third person to first — mark the moments when Luke joined Paul’s company. In the letter to the Colossians, Paul calls Luke the beloved physician; in the second letter to Timothy he says that only Luke is with him. He was there, at the end, in Rome. The tradition sends him after Paul’s death to preach in Achaia and Boeotia (bee-OH-shuh) in Greece. The icon tradition of the Eastern Church presents him as the first painter of icons, specifically of the image of the Virgin and Child, and while this is pious legend rather than history, it captures something true about Luke’s literary art: he painted Mary in words more fully and more beautifully than any other New Testament writer, and the three canticles he preserved from her tradition are among the most beautiful verbal icons the Church possesses.
Luke’s feast on 18 October falls in Trinity-tide, as the season draws toward its close — the season of ordinary faithful labour in which this most careful and literary of historians composed his two great works from the testimonies of others, weaving the witness of eyewitnesses into the most beautiful sustained narrative in the New Testament. He is the patron of physicians and artists, and the gift he gave the Church is both: a work of healing that restores the excluded to full membership in the story of salvation, and a work of art that makes the Gospel available to every reader at the full height of its literary power. The Prodigal Son alone would be sufficient to secure his place in the history of human writing. The Magnificat alone would be sufficient to secure his place in the history of Christian prayer. Together, the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles constitute the most comprehensive account of the origins and spread of the Christian faith that we possess, written by a man who made himself, by the discipline of his inquiry and the beauty of his prose, the memory of the Church.
O Almighty God, who by thy servant Luke didst give to the Church the Gospel of thy mercy and the history of thy Spirit’s work in the world; Grant that we may sing with Mary, prophesy with Zechariah, and depart with Simeon in peace, knowing that the one whose story Luke told with such care is present still in the breaking of the bread; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end.
Amen.