The Life
Luke is the most literary of the four evangelists — a careful historian who opens his Gospel with a formal Greek prologue worthy of Thucydides, a companion of Paul whose vivid narrative of the missionary journeys in Acts contains some of the most sustained and dramatic writing in the New Testament, and a theologian of mercy whose distinctive contribution to the Gospel portrait of Jesus is the parables of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Prodigal Son (the Parable of Mercy par excellence). Paul calls him the beloved physician (Colossians 4:14), and this detail has defined Luke's identity in Christian tradition: the doctor who cared for Paul's body wrote the most compassionate of the four Gospels.
Luke was almost certainly a Gentile — the only non-Jewish author in the New Testament — from Antioch in Syria, according to the tradition preserved by Eusebius and Jerome. He was not one of the twelve apostles and does not claim to have been an eyewitness to the events of Jesus's life: his Gospel prologue states that he is recording the accounts of those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, and has compiled them carefully and in order. He is the New Testament's most self-conscious historical methodologist — the one who tells you, at the outset, what he is doing and why. He is also the most thorough: the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles together constitute more of the New Testament by volume than the letters of Paul.
His Gospel is notable for what it emphasises: Mary (the Annunciation, the Magnificat, the Visitation, the nativity narrative — all from Mary's perspective, which has led theologians to suggest Luke had access to Mary's own memories), women (who appear throughout Luke's Gospel more prominently than in the other three), the poor (the Beatitudes in Luke begin: Blessed are you who are poor, not Matthew's poor in spirit), outcasts (Zacchaeus the tax collector, the ten lepers including the Samaritan, the sinful woman in the Pharisee's house), and prayer (Jesus in Luke is constantly praying, and the Lord's Prayer is given in a context of Jesus praying). Luke's Jesus is the one who says: Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. Only Luke records these words from the cross.
The tradition that Luke was also a painter — that he made the first icon of the Virgin Mary from life, painting her portrait while she told him the stories of the Incarnation that appear only in his Gospel — is not provable as history but is theologically coherent: the man who gave us the most intimate portrait of Mary in words was, by the same logic, capable of giving it in images. Dozens of famous Marian icons across the Christian world (including the Black Madonna of Czestochowa and the Salus Populi Romani in Rome's Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore) are attributed by tradition to Luke's hand. The Evangelist Luke is the patron of the painters' guild in many European cities, and every Christian artist who has ever made an icon of the Virgin has worked, consciously or not, in his tradition.
The Road to Emmaus
Only Luke records the story of the two disciples walking to Emmaus on the afternoon of Easter Sunday — their faces downcast, talking about everything that had happened, not recognising the stranger who joins them and walks with them and opens the Scriptures to them along the way. It is only when they arrive in Emmaus and invite the stranger to stay and he sits down and takes bread and blesses and breaks it and gives it to them that their eyes are opened and they recognise him. And he vanishes from their sight. They say to each other: Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us? The story is Luke's most characteristic contribution to the resurrection narratives: the Lord present in the journey, in the opened word, in the breaking of bread, recognisable only in the moment of his disappearance. It is the pattern of the Eucharist and the pattern of every Christian life. Luke the Physician — caring for Paul Paul refers to Luke as the beloved physician — a passing detail in a letter's greeting that has shaped everything we know about Luke's identity. He was a doctor who became Paul's companion and (it appears) his personal physician, caring for his body through the missionary journeys. The thorn in Paul's flesh — whatever chronic condition afflicted him — was treated by Luke. The shipwreck at Malta, the stonings, the floggings — Luke was there, treating the wounds. His Gospel's emphasis on healing (more miracle healings appear in Luke than in any other Gospel), on the compassionate attention Jesus gives to suffering bodies, may reflect the perspective of someone who has spent his life caring for sick people. The Luke who writes about the woman bent double for eighteen years, the ten lepers, the man with dropsy — writes with clinical observation and with compassion. He noticed the details of suffering because he had been trained to notice them. Luke and the Tradition of the Icon The tradition that Luke painted the original icon of the Virgin Mary — sitting before her, receiving the stories of the Annunciation and Nativity that appear only in his Gospel, capturing her face in paint as he captured her memories in words — is the founding theological claim of the icon tradition in the East. Luke is the patron of painters precisely because the icon is not a portrait but a theology: it is the face of the Mother as seen by the one who recorded her words. The Black Madonna of Czestochowa in Poland, the Hodegetria icon of Constantinople, the Salus Populi Romani in Rome — all attributed by tradition to Luke — represent the same claim: that the Gospel Luke wrote and the icon Luke painted are the same act of witness, in two different media.
Walk in Their Footsteps
Pilgrimage sites connected to St Luke the Evangelist
Ask St Luke the Evangelist to Intercede
Bring these intentions to this saint in prayer:
Luke investigated everything carefully and wrote an orderly account. He was a doctor who noticed the details of suffering. He was a companion who stayed with Paul through shipwrecks and beatings. He was the one who recorded Mary's version of the Annunciation — the only man in the New Testament entrusted with her story. He saw that Jesus prayed constantly and wrote it down. He saw that Jesus kept forgiving people and wrote it down. He wrote the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, the Road to Emmaus. He was a careful, compassionate, methodical witness to everything he was given to witness. The Gospel of Luke is the most humane document in the New Testament — written by the doctor who understood the weight of a body in pain and the grace of its healing.
“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.”
St Luke, physician and evangelist — teach me to see suffering with your trained eye and your compassionate heart. Help me investigate carefully the things I do not understand. Help me write them down accurately. And help me receive the stories that others tell me about their encounters with God — receiving them as you received Mary's stories — with the attention and humility of someone who knows that the account is not mine but was entrusted to me to pass on. Amen.