Luke, was a physician of Antioch, who, as appeared from his writings, was skilled in the Greek tongue. He was a follower of the Apostle Paul, and his fellow traveller in all his wanderings. He wrote a Gospel, whereof the same Paul maketh mention when he saith that Luke is the brother hose praise is in the Gospel throughout all the Churches. Of him the Apostle wrote unto the Colossians : Luke, the beloved physician, greeteth you. And again, unto Timothy: Only Luke is with me. In addition to the Gospel called by his name, Luke published also another notable volume, entitled The Acts of the Apostles, wherein the progress of the Gospel-story is brought down to Paul’s two years sojourn at Rome, that is to say, until the fourth year of Nero, from which we gather that it was at Rome that the said book was composed.
The silence of Luke is one of the reasons why we reckon as apocryphal the Book of the Acts of Paul and Thecla, and the whole story about the Baptism of Leo. For why should the fellow traveller of the Apostle, who knew other things, be ignorant only of this? Moreover, there is against these documents the statement of Tertullian, almost a contemporary writer, that the Apostle John convicted a certain priest in Asia, who was a great admirer of the Apostle Paul, of having written them, and that the said priest owned that he had been induced to compost them through his admiration for Paul, and that he was deposed in consequence. Some persons suppose that when Paul in his Epistles useth the phrase: According to my Gospel: he meaneth the Gospel written by Luke.
Howbeit, Luke learnt his Gospel not from the Apostle Paul only ( who had not companied with the Lord in the flesh )but also from other Apostles, as himself declareth at the beginning of his work, where he saith of the things he wrote: They delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word. According to what he had heard, therefore, did he write his Gospel. As to the Acts of the Apostles, he composed them from his own personal knowledge. He was never married. He lived eighty-four years. He is buried at Constantinople, whither his bones are supposed to have been brought from Achaia in the twentieth year of Constantine, together with the relicks of the Apostle Andrew. [ And when the Church of the Apostles at Constantinople was repaired by order of the Emperor Justinian, three wooden coffins were found, bearing inscriptions which averred that they contained, respectively, the bodies of Saints Andrew, Luke, and Timothy. But tradition saith that the relicks of Saint Luke were afterwards carried to Padua.]
Antiphon on Benedictus:
In the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four living creatures, having each of them six wings, and full of eyes within, * and they rest not day and night, saying, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come(Alleluia). Antiphon on the Magnificat:
For the wisdom of the ancients the holy Evangelists searched with diligent inquiry * and by the Prophets sayings did they establish the truth of their narration(Alleluia).Collect:
Almighty God, who calledst Luke the Physician, whose praise is in the Gospel, to be an Evangelist, and Physician of the soul, may it please thee, that, by the wholesome medicines of the doctrine delivered by him, all the diseases of our souls may be healed. Through the merits of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.
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