On October 18, Catholics and other Christians around the world will
celebrate the feast of St. Luke, the physician and companion of St. Paul
whose gospel preserved the most extensive biography of Jesus Christ.
St. Luke wrote a greater volume of the New Testament than any other
single author, including the earliest history of the Church.
Ancient
traditions also acknowledge Luke as the founder of Christian
iconography, making him a patron of artists as well as doctors and other
medical caregivers.
Luke came from the large metropolitan city of Antioch, a part of
modern-day Turkey.
In Luke's lifetime, his native city emerged as an
important center of early Christianity.
During the future saint's early
years, the city's port had already become a cultural center, renowned
for arts and sciences.
Historians do not know whether Luke came to
Christianity from Judaism or paganism, although there are strong
suggestions that Luke was a gentile convert.
Educated as a physician in the Greek-speaking city, Luke was among
the most cultured and cosmopolitan members of the early Church. Scholars
of archeology and ancient literature have ranked him among the top
historians of his time period, besides noting the outstanding Greek
prose style and technical accuracy of his accounts of Christ's life and
the apostles' missionary journeys.
Other students of biblical history adduce from Luke's writings that
he was the only evangelist to incorporate the personal testimony of the
Blessed Virgin Mary, whose role in Christ's life emerges most clearly in
his gospel.
Tradition credits him with painting several icons of
Christ's mother, and one of the sacred portraits ascribed to him – known
by the title “Salvation of the Roman People”-- survives to this day in
the Basilica of St. Mary Major.
Some traditions hold that Luke became a direct disciple of Jesus
before his ascension, while others hold that he became a believer only
afterward. After St. Paul's conversion, Luke accompanied him as his
personal physician-- and, in effect, as a kind of biographer, since the
journeys of Paul on which Luke accompanied him occupy a large portion of
the Acts of the Apostles.
Luke probably wrote this text, the final
narrative portion of the New Testament, in the city of Rome where the
account ends.
Luke was also among the only companions of Paul who did not abandon
him during his final imprisonment and death in Rome.
After the martyrdom
of St. Paul in the year 67, St. Luke is said to have preached elsewhere
throughout the Mediterranean, and possibly died as a martyr.
However,
even tradition is unclear on this point.
Fittingly, the evangelist whose
travels and erudition could have filled volumes, wrote just enough to
proclaim the gospel and apostolic preaching to the world.
SIC: CNA/INT'L