Holy Apostle and Evangelist Luke

Saint Luke the Evangelist

Today is the feast-day in the Orthodox Church of Saint Luke the Evangelist. The importance of Saint Luke to the development of the Christian faith and the Orthodox Church in particular cannot be overstated. He authored two of the books of Holy Scripture – the Gospel account bearing his name, and also the Book of Acts: the single largest contribution to the Greek-language Scriptures by any single author. It is on account of Luke that we even have a comprehensive account of Christ’s early life, and it is also on account of Luke that we have an account of what happened to the followers of Christ in the immediate wake of His Crucifixion and Resurrection. Luke’s account of Christ emphasises the social and historical dimensions of His life on earth, and also the universal importance of His ministry. Although devotion to this great saint is universal, he was born and raised in Antioch, and thus is glorified and venerated among the Antiochian saints.

Saint Luke [Gk. Λουκᾶς, L. Lucas, Ar. Lûqâ لوقا], a Greek by parentage, was raised in Antioch. Luke was probably from a fairly well-to-do family, because he was versant in Greek philosophy, in art, and in the study of medicine. He became a physician upon reaching adulthood, and having been in contact with Jews among his patients in Antioch he may have been drawn to their prophetic religion, and may have come to believe in the Jewish God. According to the tradition of the Church, when Luke was a young man he had occasion to visit Jerusalem, and was called out to the nearby village of ‘Imwâs – which is to say, Emmaus – near ar-Ramla:

Now behold, two of them were travelling that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was seven miles from Jerusalem. And they talked together of all these things which had happened. So it was, while they conversed and reasoned, that Jesus Himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were restrained, so that they did not know Him. (Lk 24:13-16)

The companion of Luke on this journey is named in his account as Kleopas, identified in Orthodox tradition as the brother of Saint Joseph. Luke does not name himself as the other companion – in keeping with the literary custom used also by Saint Mark and by Saint John. Jesus, who was disguised such that Kleopas did not know Him, asked the two men why they were sad. Kleopas had entertained the hopes, common among Jesus’s disciples, that the Messiah would come and restore the righteous reign of the Hasmonean Kingdom, and rule in the name of the Heir of David in perpetuity. After the Crucifixion, these worldly, political hopes were utterly dashed. He said to Jesus that ‘certain women of our company’ had come to the tomb and found it empty, but in so saying he revealed his unbelief.

Jesus rebuked him and Luke together for not having believed what the women had told them, which was true, and then began to expound those passages in the Hebrew prophets which hint at what the Messiah must suffer. When the three of them came to ‘Imwâs, Jesus wanted to go on, but Luke and Kleopas insisted that he stay with them. Jesus agreed, and when He came inside, and broke bread and blessed it, then all of a sudden Kleopas recognised Him, and Luke knew Him, and at once He vanished from sight. Thus Saint Luke was among the first to be given the honour to behold the Risen Lord, despite being a Gentile and despite being a newcomer to Jerusalem.

Saint Luke was quickly welcomed into the company of the Apostles, as he is numbered among the Seventy. The next we hear about Saint Luke is from the lips, or rather the pen, of Saint Paul – in whose company Luke was constant in brotherly and devoted attendance. He is mentioned in the benediction of Paul’s epistle to Philemon, along with Demas and the saints Mark and Aristarchos. He appears in a similar litany of ‘fellow workers’ in the benediction of the Pauline epistle to the Colossians. At the end of his second epistle to Timotheos, Paul complains that Demas and Saint Titos and Saint Kreskēs have all abandoned him, and that ‘Λουκᾶς ἐστιν μόνος μετ’ ἐμοῦ’ – ‘Only Luke is with me’.

If we take Luke’s account of himself in Acts as authoritative – that is to say, those places in Acts where he refers to the Apostles in the first-person rather than in the third-person – then we can assume that he accompanied Saint Paul from Trōada until he departs from Philippoi, where Saint Luke evidently stayed until Saint Paul returned there. From then on Luke accompanied the chief of the Apostles until his martyrdom.

The community of Christians put Saint Luke’s talents to good use. He wrote one Gospel account – in fact, the only account to be addressed to a specific person, Theophilos – and the Acts of the Apostles as a seamless continuation of the Gospel narrative. The Orthodox tradition identifies Theophilos with the governor of Achaïa in Greece, who went by that name. (This was one of the places that Luke visited after the martyrdom of Saint Paul.) In writing his Gospel, Saint Luke relied on primary source documents and eyewitness testimony. He may indeed have relied upon the eyewitness testimony of the Most Holy Theotokos, and he even depicted the likeness of the Most Holy Theotokos – thus becoming the first iconographer of the Church. As a historian, Saint Luke is meticulous, thorough, and responsible to the facts: his knowledge of contemporary political and physical gæography is impressive by Classical standards. (As it should be: he travelled in person to many of the places he speaks of!) Although he uses certain figurative language and inflates some figures to suit a didactic objective, this practice is fully in keeping with the histories of Herodotos and Thoukydidēs.

Saint Luke’s primary themes were the universality of the Gospel message – extended even to women, Samaritans, Gentiles, lepers and tax collectors; the particular care and concern Christ had for sinners; and the identification of Christ with the poor and sorrowful. Mary’s ode of praise, with all its social potentials, is found in the very first chapter of Saint Luke’s Gospel, setting the tone for his work. It is indeed Saint Luke who most strongly emphasises – in chapter 12, verse 48 of his Gospel, for example – the particular responsibility that those who enjoy material prosperity and political power have, to meet the needs of those who are materially poor.

If we consider Saint Mark to have been the founder of the allegorical-symbolic and philosophical Alexandrian school of exegesis (as the Copts claim), then it seems altogether fair to consider Saint Luke to have been the spiritual progenitor of the social-historical Antiochian school of exegesis. We can see præfigurations of Saint John Chrysostom in the Gospel of Luke; his concerns are much the same. Saint Luke emphasises the concrete, the factual, the present-right-in-front-of-you, in his Gospel account – and he also grounds his Gospel in the social concerns of the early Christian community. Note that Christ first appears right in front of Luke on the road to ‘Imwâs; also that He chides Luke for not having believed the women who were, in fact, right there to see the empty tomb!

According to Holy Tradition, Saint Luke was beheaded by the Roman government under Nero while preaching the Gospel. His grave and his final resting-place were located in Thēbai in Boiōtia, Greece. The relics of the Saint were plundered from Thēbai at some point in the Middle Ages – possibly during the Fourth Crusade – and brought to Padua, to the Benedictine Abbazia di Santa Giustina. The head of Saint Luke was bought by Karel IV of Bohemia, and brought to the Cathedral of Saint Vitus in Prague, where it still rests.

In 1992 the then-Metropolitan Ierōnymos of Thēba (now Archbishop Ierōnymos II of Greece), made a request of the Catholic bishop Antonio Mattiazzo of Padua to return a significant part of the relics of Saint Luke to their rightful resting place in Greece. As a result of his request, the relics in both Padua and Prague were subjected to a scientific investigation and compared. It was determined that the relics belonged to a man of Syrian descent, elderly at the age of death but vigorously built, who had died sometime between the years 72 and 416. The skull in Saint Vitus Cathedral and the body in the Abbey of Saint Justina were determined to have belonged to the same man. Bishop Mattiazzo, in a touchingly selfless gesture of goodwill, sent to Metropolitan Ierōnymos the rib of the man which rested closest to his heart, to be venerated at Thēba. Holy evangelist and apostle Luke, physician and iconographer who met the Risen Lord face-to-face, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Apolytikion to Saint Luke the Evangelist, Tone 5:

Let us praise with sacred songs the holy Apostle Luke,
The recorder of the joyous Gospel of Christ
And the scribe of the Acts of the Apostles,
For his writings are a testimony of the Church of Christ:
He is the physician of human weaknesses and infirmities.
He heals the wounds of our souls,
And constantly intercedes for our salvation!

Monastery of Saint Luke, Thēba, Greece