Today the church commemorates the memorial of St. Luke, the gospel writer and author of the Gospel and book of Acts. He was most likely trained as a physician and healer and was a Greek gentile being associated with St. Paul & Barnabas per the Acts of the Apostles account. St. Luke is the patron of physicians and surgeons with a writing style that represents a healing and merciful aspect to the fallen. It is believed by scholars that St. Luke may have been born a slave trained to be a healer to provide services to a wealthy family as a resident family healer for which his writings show a sense of social justice and compassion (https://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=76).
The unique item about St. Luke in the synoptic gospels unlike the others is St. Luke’s inclusion of the Magnificat of Mary from Lk. 1:46-55
Another item to reflect on is the encounter of Lazarus with the rich man for which all of us have a moral obligation to be of assistance to others regardless of our station in life or the appearance of our suffering and impoverished among us:
St. Luke’s image is often portrayed as that of a winged ox assigned by St. Jerome and St Irenaeus for it represents the old sacrificial offering image in the temple. St. Luke’s Gospel recalls the presentation of Jesus in the temple and the closing of Luke’s gospel tells of the destruction of the temple and the end times. Of course, we also recall all of the gospel writers were assigned symbols per Revelation 4:7 of a lion (St. Mark), ox, (St. Luke) man (St. Matthew) and eagle (St. John) to which St. Jerome’s presentation differed a bit from St Irenaeus (https://scotland.op.org/the-ox-as-a-symbol-of-st-luke/).
St. Luke reminds us of the nature and actions of our Lord Jesus, the Divine Healer in his writings to us. He reminds us of Mary’s fiat and her role with what we can become as Christians. May we look to St. Luke’s gospel this day to go out and be another Christ to our brothers and sisters in need.
St. Luke, pray for us.
StreetEvangelist 