Saint Luke

St. Paul names St. Luke in three of his letters: to the Colossians, to Philemon and to St. Timothy. In the Letter to the Colossians, written from prison, St. Paul sent on St. Luke's greetings and called him a physician. In the Letter to Philemon, St. Paul listed him among the men working beside him.

St. Paul wrote his last letter to St. Timothy as a prisoner in Rome who expected to die soon. Demas had deserted him and others had gone to Galatia and Dalmatia, and St. Paul wrote that only St. Luke was still with him. St. Irenaeus read that line as proof that St. Luke was inseparable from St. Paul.

At Troas, St. Paul saw in a night vision a man of Macedonia begging him to come over and help. From that point the narrator of the Acts of the Apostles writes we, as one of St. Paul's own party. St. Irenaeus read the word we in Acts as St. Luke's own testimony that he travelled with St. Paul, and counted St. Luke's voyages from this sailing out of Troas.

The company sailed by Samothrace and Neapolis to Philippi, a Roman colony and the leading city of its district. On the sabbath they went out to the river, where they expected to find a place of prayer, and spoke to the women gathered there. Lydia was baptized with her household and insisted that the company stay in her house.

Later, when St. Paul came back through Macedonia, the narrative turned to we again at Philippi, where it had stopped. St. Irenaeus read this second we, too, as St. Luke's own witness. At Tyre the disciples, with their wives and children, walked the company to the beach, and everyone knelt there to pray before parting.

At Caesarea, in the house of Philip the evangelist, the prophet Agabus tied his own hands and feet with St. Paul's belt and said its owner would be bound at Jerusalem. St. Paul's companions and the people of Caesarea begged him not to go up, and when he would not be persuaded, his companions stopped and left it to the will of the Lord. In Jerusalem a crowd seized St. Paul in the Temple and beat him, until a Roman tribune came with soldiers and had him bound with two chains.

St. Paul had appealed to Caesar, and he sailed for Italy as a prisoner of a centurion named Julius. The narrative turns to we again on this voyage, and St. Irenaeus wrote that St. Luke was present for the journey and set it down with care. Past Crete a northeaster drove the ship for many days with neither sun nor stars in sight, until everyone aboard gave up hope.

St. Paul then stood among them and said an angel of God had promised him in the night that every life aboard would be spared, and only the ship lost. At dawn on the fourteenth day without food, St. Paul took bread, gave thanks to God in front of everyone and ate. The ship struck a shoal and broke up in the surf, and all 276 people aboard reached land on Malta.

St. Luke wrote his Gospel for a man named Theophilus, so that Theophilus could be sure of what he had been taught. Only his Gospel tells of the shepherds keeping watch by night when an angel appeared to them. Only his Gospel has the parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son, and its last chapter has two disciples at Emmaus recognizing the risen Jesus in the breaking of the bread.

St. Irenaeus wrote that St. Luke recorded in a book the Gospel St. Paul preached. The Muratorian fragment, an early list of the Church's Scriptures, calls him the well-known physician and says he never saw the Lord in the flesh. St. Jerome wrote that St. Luke composed the Gospel from what he heard and the Acts of the Apostles from what he saw.

St. Luke's Gospel follows the Virgin Mary from the angel Gabriel's visit at Nazareth to her three months with St. Elizabeth in the hill country. His Gospel gives the Blessed Virgin the canticle known as the Magnificat. His Gospel tells of the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem and says that the Virgin Mary kept all these events in mind and thought them over.

According to longstanding Catholic Tradition, St. Luke also painted the Virgin Mary. Theodore Lector, writing in the early sixth century, tells of a portrait of her by St. Luke that was sent from Jerusalem to Constantinople. In Rome, a picture of the Virgin in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore is ascribed to St. Luke, and its history can be followed back to 847 AD.

The Roman Martyrology records that St. Luke suffered much for the name of Christ and died filled with the Holy Spirit. In 357 AD, the twentieth year of the Emperor Constantius, his bones were carried to Constantinople with those of the apostle St. Andrew. Catholic Tradition holds that the Church of Padua keeps his relics in the Basilica of Santa Giustina.

The Church keeps the feast of St. Luke the Evangelist on October 18. Writing to Padua for the feast in 2000 AD, Pope St. John Paul II called the Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles the true treasure St. Luke left the Church.