Overview:

The Feast of St. Luke, Evangelist

A Reflection for the Feast of St. Luke, Evangelist

“Your friends make known, O Lord, the glorious splendor of your Kingdom.” (Ps 145:12)

Find today’s readings here.

Today we celebrate the feast of one of the Fab Four—and not one who grew up in Liverpool. I’ve spent the last two weeks on vacation in England and got to see where my dad’s very favorite band began, so they have been on my mind. I’ve heard so much about how Beatlemania affected the groups’ lives and families—John’s aunt moved out to the country and Paul’s father moved to a different house because too many fans would stake out to try to talk to the Beatles, their relatives, their neighbors, their cats or just their front doors. 

The Gospel writers were also a group of four, though they did not work together as the Beatles did. Plus, the “four Gospels” as we know them today were not established as “the” four until a few centuries later.

We know quite a few things about the life of St. Luke from Scripture and the writings of the early church, including his friendship with Mary and life as a Greek physician. Did St. Luke experience fans of his work coming up to his door, looking for more insight into what he had written? Or did patients of his ask for some extra-special facts about Mary that he hadn’t written down? “Dr. Luke, please fix my leg, and also, do you know what Mary’s favorite color is?” 

St. Luke, and St. Paul with whom he traveled, made the splendor of God’s kingdom known in their writings, contained in the best-selling book of all time. In the Gospel today (conveniently and of course from the Gospel of Luke), Jesus sends out the 72 disciples to spread the good news. Though Luke was not one of these 72, he followed in their footsteps. The disciples were warned that they would not be welcome at every house they entered—did Luke, a couple decades later, experience the same standoffishness? 

Today, we can place ourselves alongside Luke, as a fellow disciple or as a patient of his, and live the Gospel as he did.

Though we are not living at the same time as Luke or as the Beatles in their touring days, we can live our lives with the fervor of Beatles fans directed toward the Gospel, in which everything reminds us of Christ’s teachings. May we live so that if we were to meet him tomorrow, we’d be pleased with our actions.

Jill Rice is a 2022-23 O’Hare Fellow at America. She is now the SEO and Analytics Associate at America. She graduated from Fordham University's Lincoln Center campus and majored in classical languages and comparative literature.