Luke the Evangelist

Who they were

Luke wrote the third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. St Paul calls him 'Luke, the beloved physician'. According to the historian Eusebius he was born at Antioch in Syria and was a Gentile, and his Gospel is especially attentive to the Gentiles: he alone tells the parable of the Good Samaritan and of the one healed leper who came back to give thanks.

Acts switches into 'we' when Paul sets out for Macedonia, which shows that Luke joined him there in the year 51; he was with him again seven years later on the journey to Jerusalem, and stayed beside him in his Roman imprisonment: 'Only Luke is with me,' Paul wrote to Timothy.

The miracles

There was never a formal cause: Luke has been honoured as an evangelist since the earliest Church. He is patron of doctors and of artists.

Why that counted as sanctity

Luke is the evangelist of mercy, who set down the Gospel for the nations with a physician's care for the poor and the outcast, and who stayed faithfully beside Paul when everyone else had left him.

Connected on this site

• Penitent Thief Saint
  “The penitent thief, also known as the good thief, wise thief, grateful thief, or thief on the cross, is one of two unnamed thieves in Luke the Evangelist's account of the crucifixion of Jesus in the New Testament.” — Wikipedia