With joy today the Church remembers and honors Saint Luke the Evangelist. Luke, a disciple of Paul of Tarsus, a native of Antioch. And, recognized as the author of the third Gospel as well as the Acts of the Apostles. He is a very great personality.
The Saints as Real People
The Church, in her wisdom, proposes to us to celebrate the memory of the saints,. To feel them alive next to us. To pray together with them and to imitate their lives and their spiritual wealth. We know St. Luke well. Even though we often run the risk of putting the saints inside the niche … and leave them there! By this, we tend to forget the fact that they were real people. They lived their emotions, their feelings, their failures, the inner search with passion and strength. Luke had a character, a story, a family like any every one of us. He had dreams. And, at a certain point, in Antioch, in the third most populous city of antiquity, he met Saul of Tarsus who spoke of a Jew (Jesus) who lived in Jerusalem preaching the true face of God. He got to know Jesus through his association with St Paul.
Luke must have been particularly inclined to mercy. More than the other Evangelists, he captures this aspect of Jesus in his writings. And he invites us to also be inclined to mercy. This by showing mercy to people around us. And in turn obtain mercy from our most merciful God: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy” (Matt. 5:7)
Prayer
Prayer, for Luke, was something important, necessary for the Christian life. He insistently presents Jesus in prayer: at the moment of baptism, on Mount Tabor, before choosing the apostles, at the moment of asking them what they thought of him, in Gethsemane. Luke reports various prayers: the ‘Benedictus’ (Lk 1:67-79), the ‘Magnificat’ (Lk 1:46-55), the ‘Nunc dimittis’ (Lk 2:29-32). He tells the parable of the insistent widow who forced the judge to take her case in hand, adding: “Jesus told this parable about the need to pray always, without getting tired” (Lk 18). On the feast day of St. Luke, let us ask for the grace to be more active in our prayer life. Luke, again, had a broad heart. A heart open to the least, to those forgotten and despised by society; another great treasure that we can acquire from this saint.
Gift to St Luke
We owe a lot to Saint Luke. The word he wrote is the Word of God. The word of salvation which enlightens and warms, which strengthens and sustains. The most pleasing gift that we can present to him on his feast day, and certainly the most beautiful and truest way to honor and celebrate him, is to read his writings (the 3rd Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles). Meditate on them. Let the messages contained in them descend into our hearts and make our life more evangelical. Make it more similar to him of which they speak, that is, the person of Jesus, our Savior. Find some time today to read some portions of Luke’s works in the Bible.
St Luke the Evangelist, pray for us.
