Luke the Evangelist

Evangelist Luke

Saint Luke - Biography and life

Saint Luke Siro or Luke, as we read in some Latin codices, was originally from Antioch. Unlike the other Evangelists, he did not convert to faith from Judaism, but from paganism. Although of pagan origin, St. Luke knows Jewish customs and rites, knowledge gained through long contact with the Jews of Antioch, and with the great familiarity he had with the Apostle St. Paul.

Saint Luke was one of those gentiles who after the death of Saint Stephan embraced the faith in Antioch. Luke had close relations with Saint Paul and with the apostle during his second mission he arrived in Troade and then continued the journey to Philippi in Macedonia.

After having founded a Church in this city, the Apostle had to leave immediately and probably left the care of organizing the new Christianity to St. Luke.

During the course of his third mission when Saint Paul passed by Philippi, Saint Luke joined him again and accompanied him to Jerusalem, Caesarea and Rome. As a faithful disciple he stayed with Saint Paul until the moment when he died a martyr in the persecution of Nero.

Saint Luke doctor and, according to the tradition, also a painter who has painted several images of the Most Holy Mary. Uncertain are the news on the life of St. Luke after the martyrdom of St. Paul and what kind of death he suffered.

The most ancient testimonies agree on the name of Saint Luke as the author of the third gospel and it can be believed that the third Gospel was written before 63 AD. and the Gospels of Matthew and Mark had already been written. This doctor, having been taken by Paul after the ascension of the Lord as a traveling companion, wrote down the Gospel that he preached and was written for the Gentiles.

The intrinsic examination of the Gospel fully confirms the data of tradition. It is enough, in fact, to carefully read a page of the third Gospel to quickly recognize in the author a man with a vast Greek culture. The language he uses is not only purer than that of the other New Testament writers, but reveals an exquisite classical education, and a perfect knowledge of all the nuances of syntax and grammar.

In writing the Gospel, the author wants to follow the laws of history, therefore he goes back to the origins, and reassembles the most important facts to the profane history, and to his work he puts a prologue and a dedication that recall the method followed by Thucydides and by Joseph. All this shows that the author of the third Gospel should be sought not among the Christians who converted from Judaism, but among those who came from paganism.

Unlike the other Evangelists, Saint Luke placed the recipient's name in front of his work. This is a certain Theophilus, in whom some wanted to see a symbolic personage representative of every believer who loves God. Among the exegetes, however, the sentence that considers Teofilo as a friend or disciple of Saint Luke is more common. Moreover, we know nothing about Theophilus, except perhaps that he had to be a Christian who converted from paganism.

The same Evangelist in the prologue premised on his work hints at the purpose he proposed in writing. He wanted to neatly expose the life, the miracles and the teachings of Jesus starting from his origins until his Ascension into heaven, so that, both Theophilus and the other Christians, would recognize the truth of the things they had been taught.

However, if we carefully examine the third Gospel, it will not be long before we discover that in addition to this end, which could be called external, Saint Luke aimed at a higher and internal purpose, which is to prove by means of his narration that Jesus Christ he is the Savior of all men, be they Jews or Gentiles.

It was also observed that Saint Luke collected all those traits of the life of Jesus, which serve to highlight his goodness and his mercy towards sinners, so that the third Gospel was rightly called the Gospel of mercy.

Therefore, in that way that St. Matthew wanted to present Jesus as the expected Messiah in a special way, and Saint Mark described him as the Son of God, whom all nature obeys, Saint Luke presented him as the Savior of all , which is full of goodness and mercy for all.

Since then in the childhood story of Jesus, St. Luke narrates several mysteries of which the only or almost unique witness was Saint Mary and on the other hand twice in this part of his Gospel he recalls that Saint Mary kept all these things in her heart, it can rightly be concluded that the Mother of God was the immediate or mediated main source to which the Evangelist drew what he narrated from the Savior's childhood.

Saint Luke Parables Index

1. The lost currency
2. The prodigal son
3. The good Samaritan
4. The rich fool
5. The rich man and Lazarus
6. The Pharisee and the tax collector
7. The wise and foolish builders
8. The construction of the tower
9. The king who goes to war
10. The unfair administrator
11. The faithful and wise slave
12. The sower
13. Children on the market square
14. The two debtors
15. The friend at midnight
16. The good gifts of the Father
17. The sterile fig
18. The duty of the slave
19. The unfair judge
20. The slaves who await
21. The mines
22. The Great Banquet
23. The evil tenants
24. The mustard grain
25. The yeast