The four evangelists of the New Testament wrote differently. Matthew’s style is that as a teacher; Mark, a preacher; John, a theologian; and Luke, a historian.
A doctor by profession honed in skills of investigation, verification of facts, accuracy and sequencing, reliability and trustworthiness of information, Luke wrote with order and clarity. He, likewise, acknowledged the contribution of others in his writings.
He is the only evangelist who started the gospel with a prologue as Hellenistic Greek writers do.
“Since many have undertaken to compile a narrative of events that have been fulfilled…. I, too, have decided, after investigating everything accurately anew, to write it down in orderly sequence…that you may realize the certainty of the teachings you have received,” he wrote.
Beloved physician
Luke, Saint Paul’s “beloved physician,” wrote the most number of pages in the New Testament—the third gospel and the Book of the Acts. The information on how the early Christians lived was attributed to Luke’s writings on the spread of Christianity from Jerusalem to the Roman Empire, the center of the pagan world.
The gospel writers wrote on the different aspects of Christ’s life on Earth. Matthew emphasized Christ’s sermons, Mark on miracles, John on doctrines and Luke on parables, according to Dr. HL Willmington’s Guide to the Bible.
This description is substantiated by Luke’s gospel, which relates “six miracles and 18 parables not mentioned in the other gospels,” according to Fr. Nil Guillemette in The Cedars of Lebanon.
The four evangelists considered the culture of their readers: Matthew for the Jews; Mark, the Romans; John, the world; and Luke, the Greeks.
Luke’s gospel emphasized love, compassion and forgiveness. To him the Christian world owes the parables of the Prodigal Son and God Samaritan, the two favorites.
Father Guillemette sums Luke’s personhood as compassionate. “All his writings are full of human interest, human sympathy, concern for the poor, chivalry toward women…and avidly collected for his gospel, the record of Christ’s countless works of mercy.”
“No gospel writer is more concerned than Luke with the mercy and compassion of Jesus, and the role of the spirit in the life of Jesus and Christian disciples,” according to the New American Bible.
Thus, his evangelistic work is represented by a calf or ox, the beast of burden.
Malcolm Day, in A Treasury of Saints, said that the calf is a “suitable symbol for one whose life and works were for the welfare of others.”
Selfless and caring, Luke was the only one to care for Paul in Rome who feels somewhat abandoned at a time he needed the presence of his coworkers.
Saint Paul wrote to Timothy: “Only Luke is with me.”
Sense of God in history
The physician is also an artist, and painted an icon of the Blessed Mother. Thus, he is not only the patron saint of doctors and surgeons, but of artists, too.
Although Luke never met Jesus, Robert Ellsberg, in All Saints, considered him as one with the “most vital sense of God’s presence in ongoing history.”
Ellsberg said Luke’s gospel does not end with Jesus’ resurrection, but with the Pentecost—“Christ’s presence in the life of the church and in the midst of the world.”
After Paul’s death in Rome, Luke went to Greece to preach the words of God.
He died in Boetia at the age of 84.
His relics are honored in the Church of the Apostles in Constantinople, now Istanbul in Turkey.
Damo-Santiago is a former regional director of the Department of Education National Capital Region. She is currently a faculty member of Mater Redemptoris College in Laguna.