St Luke the Evangelist: Life, Symbol, Feast and Prayer

St Luke the Evangelist is the author of the third Gospel and of the Acts of the Apostles, a Greek physician of Antioch whom St Paul calls "the most dear physician" and who stayed at the Apostle's side until his martyrdom. His emblem is the ox, he is the patron of physicians, surgeons and painters, and tradition has long credited him with portraits of Our Lady. His feast falls on 18 October, a feast of the second class in the 1962 calendar; below are his life from Scripture and the tradition, his writings, his death, his symbol and the prayers of his Mass in Latin and English.

Who was St Luke the Evangelist?

Almost all that is certain about Luke comes from the New Testament itself. From St Paul we learn three things. Luke was a gentile, for Paul does not count him among his helpers "who are of the circumcision" (Colossians iv. 10-11). He was a fellow worker of the Apostle: "Mark, Aristarchus, Demas and Luke, my fellow labourers" (Philemon 24). And he was a medical man: "Luke, the most dear physician, saluteth you" (Colossians iv. 14).

St Jerome, in the lessons read at Matins on his feast in the Roman Breviary, adds what the early Church knew: Luke was "a physician of Antioch," skilled in Greek, a follower of the Apostle Paul "and the companion of all his journeying." Eusebius also places his home at Antioch, and Butler holds that he was almost certainly a Greek. Nothing is known of his conversion or of his family; he was not one of those who had seen the Lord in the flesh, as he himself says at the opening of his Gospel.

The companion of St Paul

Luke's presence at the side of St Paul is written into the Acts in a quiet way. Suddenly, when Paul crosses from Troas into Macedonia, the narrator stops saying "they" and says "we": "immediately we sought to go into Macedonia" (Acts xvi. 10). These "we" passages return at intervals through the rest of the book, as far as the shipwreck off Malta and the arrival in Rome, and they are the signature of an eyewitness.

From then on, Butler says, he seems never to have left Paul except when sent on the service of the churches. He was with him in his first Roman captivity, and he was with him in the second, when the Apostle wrote his last letter: "I have fought a good fight: I have finished my course: I have kept the faith... Only Luke is with me" (2 Timothy iv. 7, 11). The Epistle of his feast, from the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, was read of him by St Jerome and the Church: "We have sent also with him the brother whose praise is in the gospel through all the churches" (2 Corinthians viii. 18).

The Gospel of St Luke and the Acts of the Apostles

Luke explains his purpose himself, in the four verses that open his Gospel: "Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a narration of the things that have been accomplished among us, according as they have delivered them unto us, who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word: it seemed good to me also, having diligently attained to all things from the beginning, to write to thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mayest know the verity of those words in which thou hast been instructed" (Luke i. 1-4).

He wrote, Butler says, as a careful recorder, for Greek readers. St Jerome adds that he learned the Gospel not only from Paul, who had not been with the Lord in the flesh, but from the other Apostles; and he sums up the difference between Luke's two books in one line: the Gospel he wrote "as he had heard," the Acts "as he had seen."

Without Luke we should know far less of the childhood of Christ. Only his Gospel gives the full account of the Annunciation, the words of the Angel that begin the Hail Mary, the Visitation to St Elizabeth, and the three canticles the Church sings every day in the Divine Office: the Benedictus of Zachary at Lauds, the Magnificat of Our Lady at Vespers, and the Nunc dimittis of Simeon at Compline. Only Luke tells us that Mary "kept all these words, pondering them in her heart" (Luke ii. 19). He records, Butler counts, six miracles and eighteen parables found in no other Gospel, among them the Good Samaritan and the prodigal son, and the promise to the good thief: "This day thou shalt be with me in paradise."

The Acts of the Apostles is the sequel, addressed to the same Theophilus: "The former treatise I made, O Theophilus, of all things which Jesus began to do and to teach" (Acts i. 1). From the thirteenth chapter it follows almost only St Paul, and it ends with his two years under guard at Rome. St Jerome concluded from this that the book was written in Rome, about the fourth year of Nero.

How did St Luke the Evangelist die?

Here the certain history stops, and Butler is frank that the later accounts "are impossible to reconcile." A fairly early and widespread tradition, Butler says, holds that he never married, wrote his Gospel in Greece, and died at the age of eighty-four, in Boeotia; St Jerome, in the Breviary, likewise gives him eighty-four years of life, without a wife. St Gregory Nazianzen, in the fourth century, is the first quoted as calling him a martyr, but his words do not certainly mean that, and Butler judges the martyrdom "more than doubtful." The Collect of his feast speaks instead of a lifelong martyrdom of penance: he "ever bore in his body the mortification of the Cross."

His relics, Jerome says, were taken from Achaia to Constantinople, together with those of St Andrew the Apostle; Butler dates the translation to the reign of the Emperor Constantius II, who died in 361. In the West, Padua has long claimed to keep his body in the Basilica of Santa Giustina.

St Luke the Evangelist symbol: why an ox?

The four Evangelists are represented by the four living creatures that the prophet Ezechiel saw beside the throne of God, "the face of a man, and the face of a lion... and the face of an ox... and the face of an eagle" (Ezechiel i. 10), which St John saw again in the Apocalypse: "the second living creature like a calf" (Apocalypse iv. 7).

The ox, or calf, was given to Luke. St Irenaeus already explains why: the ox is the animal of sacrifice, and Luke's Gospel opens with sacrifice, with the priest Zachary in the Temple, whose lot it was "to offer incense, going into the temple of the Lord" (Luke i. 9). So when people ask why the bull is associated with St Luke, this is the answer: the priestly beginning of his Gospel, and the sacrifice of Christ to which the whole of it leads. In the usage of the Latin Church, the man belongs to St Matthew, the lion to St Mark, and the eagle to St John.

St Luke the Evangelist icon: the painter of Our Lady

A tradition as old as the sixth century calls Luke a painter. A writer of that time says that the Empress Eudokia, in the fifth century, sent from Jerusalem to St Pulcheria an image of Our Lady painted by St Luke, and many other pictures were later attributed to him. The best known in the West is the Salus Populi Romani at St Mary Major in Rome; in the East, several other icons of the Mother of God are attributed to him.

Historians date these images to much later centuries, and Butler recalls the honest word of St Augustine that nothing was known of the bodily appearance of the Virgin. The tradition is a pious one, not a historical certainty. What is beyond doubt is that no writer has given painters more subjects than the Evangelist of the Annunciation and the Nativity, and that is why the guilds of painters took him for their patron, among all the Catholic saints who watch over a craft.

What is St Luke the Evangelist the patron saint of?

Butler names him the patron of physicians and surgeons, because of St Paul's word, and of painters, because of the tradition just described. Artists in general, and those who care for the sick, have long counted him their own. Many Catholics ask his help for the sick through the nine days of the St Luke novena for healing, traditionally prayed from 10 to 18 October so as to end on his feast.

The feast of St Luke, 18 October

St Luke's feast day is 18 October. In the calendar of 1962 it is a feast of the second class, kept in red vestments, with Gloria, Creed and the Preface of the Apostles; it has its place in the traditional Catholic calendar of 1962. The 1969 calendar keeps it on the same day, as a feast.

The Mass begins with the Introit Mihi autem nimis honorati sunt amici tui, Deus, "But to me Thy friends, O God, are made exceedingly honourable" (Psalm cxxxviii. 17). The Gospel is the sending of the seventy-two disciples, "two and two before his face into every city and place whither he himself was to come," with the words "The harvest indeed is great, but the labourers are few" (Luke x. 1-2), a passage found only in his own Gospel.

Prayer to St Luke the Evangelist: the Collect of his feast

The Collect Interveniat pro nobis is the prayer the Church herself addresses to God on his day. It asks for his intercession and praises him for one thing only: that he carried the Cross in his own body for the honour of God's name.

Collect, 18 October

Intervéniat pro nobis, quǽsumus, Dómine, sanctus tuus Lucas Evangelísta: qui crucis mortificatiónem júgiter in suo córpore, pro tui nóminis honóre, portávit. Per Dóminum nostrum Jesum Christum, Fílium tuum: qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitáte Spíritus Sancti Deus, per ómnia sǽcula sæculórum. Amen.

May Thy holy Evangelist Luke, we beseech Thee, O Lord, intercede for us: who for the honour of Thy name ever bore in his body the mortification of the Cross. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.

Secret

Donis cœléstibus da nobis, quǽsumus, Dómine, líbera tibi mente servíre: ut múnera quæ deférimus, interveniénte beáto Evangelísta tuo Luca, et medélam nobis operéntur et glóriam. Per Dóminum nostrum.

Grant us, we beseech Thee, O Lord, by Thy heavenly gifts, to serve Thee with a free mind: that the offerings we bring, by the intercession of blessed Luke Thine Evangelist, may work in us both healing and glory. Through our Lord.

Postcommunion

Præsta, quǽsumus, omnípotens Deus: ut, quod de sancto altári tuo accépimus, précibus beáti Evangelístæ tui Lucæ, sanctíficet ánimas nostras, per quod tuti esse possímus. Per Dóminum nostrum.

Grant, we beseech Thee, almighty God, that what we have received from Thy holy altar may, by the prayers of blessed Luke Thine Evangelist, sanctify our souls, that through it we may be kept safe. Through our Lord.

The Secret is a fitting prayer for the patron of physicians: it asks that the Holy Sacrifice may be for us both medela, a remedy, and glory.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is St Luke the Evangelist?

The author of the third Gospel and of the Acts of the Apostles: a Greek physician from Antioch, a convert from paganism, the companion of St Paul on his journeys and in his imprisonments, and, by an old tradition, a painter of Our Lady.

Why is St Luke the Evangelist a saint?

Because the Church has venerated him from the beginning as an Evangelist, the inspired writer of two books of Holy Scripture, and as a faithful disciple who stayed with St Paul when all others had left him. His feast has been kept for many centuries in East and West.

When was St Luke the Evangelist canonized?

Never by a formal process. Canonization by the Holy See dates from the Middle Ages; the Evangelists and Apostles, like the early martyrs, were honoured as saints by the universal cult of the Church from antiquity.

Was St Luke one of the twelve Apostles?

No. He never says he saw the Lord; he says he gathered his account from those "who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word." St Jerome says he learned the Gospel from St Paul and from the other Apostles.

When was St Luke born and when did he die?

We do not know the year of either. St Jerome says he lived eighty-four years, unmarried, and a fairly early tradition adds that he died in Boeotia, in Greece, some time after St Paul's martyrdom.

What did St Luke write?

Two books of the New Testament: the Gospel according to St Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, both addressed to a certain Theophilus. Together they make up more than a quarter of the New Testament.

What is the symbol for the evangelist St Luke?

The ox or calf, one of the four living creatures of Ezechiel and the Apocalypse, because his Gospel begins with the sacrifice of Zachary in the Temple.

The Iter Fidei app carries the 1962 calendar with every feast, the Roman Missal and the Breviary in Latin and English, and the Douay-Rheims Bible, so that you can read St Luke's Gospel and pray the Mass of his feast. Join early access here.

Sources. Holy Bible, Douay-Rheims version: Luke i. 1-4, 9; ii. 19; x. 1-2; Acts i. 1; xvi. 10; Colossians iv. 10-14; Philemon 24; 2 Timothy iv. 7-11; 2 Corinthians viii. 18; Ezechiel i. 10; Apocalypse iv. 7; Psalm cxxxviii. 17. Alban Butler, Lives of the Saints, 18 October (St Luke, Evangelist). Roman Breviary, 18 October, lessons from St Jerome, On Illustrious Men, ch. 7. Roman Missal (1962), Proper of Saints, 18 October.