Luke is the only one with me
October 18, 2024 - Friday, Feast of Saint Luke, evangelist
2 Timothy 4:10-17b
The first reading for the Feast of Saint Luke is taken from the second letter of Paul to Timothy which the Church’s ancient tradition considered his last letter. In today’s reading, we hear Paul’s complaint that he is alone. Some left him, and some he sent to the mission field. The only one left with him was Luke, the beloved physician (Col 4:14). Moreover, according to our tradition, Paul wrote that letter from prison in Rome from which he was led into execution.
This traditional setting was taken by the creators of the movie, “Paul the Apostle of Christ”, released in 2004. They dedicated the movie to all those who suffer persecution for their faith in Christ. The plot of the movie begins with Luke trying to convince Paul to share his story of encountering Christ and the right understanding of Jesus’ message. At first, Paul refuses. He was afraid that people would look to him instead to Christ. But then, Luke utters this beautiful phrase: “The day I heard you preaching, my God, I saw Christ in you”. And so the story begins. Luke comes to the prison where Paul is being held to write the story of the beginnings of Christ’s movement, the people of the Lord’s way (see Acts 9:2; 22:4).
Luke wrote the Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles and he dedicated them to a certain man, which he calls “the most excellent Theophilus” (Luke 1:3; Acts 1:1). Who he was we do not know. The phrase “the most excellent” would indicate that he was a high official in the Roman administration. Some even go as far as assume that he was a Christian and provided Luke with funds for the project of writing the accounts of Jesus’ life and the early history of the Church. But the meaning of his name is not without significance. Theophilus means “friend of God” or “loved by God” and in this case, every reader of the Gospel can identify with this name.
Whether Luke was a God-fearing Gentile is debatable today. Some consider him to be a Jew like all the other writers of the Bible. But, from the early pages of his Gospel, Luke stresses the universality of his message addressed to all humanity. Only Luke traces the genealogy of Jesus to Adam, the father of us all (Luke 3:23-38). Only Luke includes Jesus’ sermon in Nazareth that features two Gentiles, a widow from Zarephath, and Naaman the Syrian, being helped by God (Luke 4:24-27). And only Luke includes the account of sending the seventy-two disciples (Luke 10:1-9). The number of disciples sent by Jesus to all the cities and places that he intended to visit is significant because according to the Septuagint version of Genesis 10, there were also seventy-two nations (Gen. 10:1-32).
Thomas Hobbes said that "man is a wolf to another man”, but Jesus sends us “like lambs among wolves" (Luke 10: 3). How should we act then? In the above-mentioned movie, some young Christians together with certain unbelievers wanted to overthrow the Roman government by violence. Luke reports it to Paul saying that they want revenge for all the suffering they experienced. But Paul strongly reacts with this powerful statement: “Love is the only way”.
As the disciples of Christ, we have the task of making ‘man a lamb to another man’, even if in the process, like Jesus, the Lamb of God (John 1:29), we shall be sacrificed. And so love is indeed the only way.
Saint Luke, evangelist, pray for us.