St. Luke - The Gospel of Compassion and Mercy

Of the four Gospels, I like the Gospel of St. Luke best.  Much of the material of St. Luke’s Gospel can be found in the Gospels of St. Mark and St. Matthew.  However, there is also much original material that is peculiar to this Gospel which makes it my favorite.

St. Luke was a Gentile convert to Christianity.  This means that St. Luke knew what it was like to be on the outside looking in.  Though the Gospel for the Feast of St. Luke speaks of Jesus choosing seventy-two disciples, it would be a mistake to think that he was among them.  Jesus came to preach to the children of Israel; and though he reached out to non-Jewish people through his ministry, none of his followers were Gentiles.  After the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, his Jewish disciples continued his ministry by preaching to all people of all languages and ethnicities.  St. Luke tells us at the very beginning of his Gospel and again at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles that he was not an eye witness but is simply reporting what he has been told.

Throughout his Gospel writing, St. Luke emphasizes the compassion of Jesus through the stories he includes and the parables that he puts into the mouth of Jesus.  It is St. Luke who tells us of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son.  It is St. Luke who tells us that the birth of Jesus was heralded first to shepherds, shepherds being prime examples of people who were looked down upon by people of that time.  It is St. Luke who portrays God as a Good Shepherd and as a woman who has lost her wedding headdress with its ten dimes.

However, it is while Jesus is hanging on the cross that St. Luke brings the tremendous compassion of Jesus to its climax as he assures one of the thieves who are crucified with him that he will share paradise with him that very day.  At the beginning of the Gospel, using the prophecy of Isaiah about the promised Messiah, St. Luke tells us that Jesus has come to set captives free among other things.  Only at his lowest ebb when he is the most vulnerable does Jesus accomplish this last of the Messianic tasks.  His promise to the man that we have come to call St. Dismas is simply breathtaking and is told only in this particular Gospel.  It should be noted that it is also St. Luke who tells us that Jesus prayed that God would forgive his executioners because they did not know what they were doing.  Even as he is dying, St. Luke’s Jesus continues to extend the compassion and mercy of God to sinners.

St. Luke is also the author of the Acts of the Apostles.  With rhetorical genius, St. Luke writes a parallel text to his Gospel demonstrating how the apostles carry on the ministry of Jesus by doing many of the same things that Jesus did.  It is also St. Luke who tells us most of the biography of St. Paul.  It is almost certain that St. Luke was a convert and fellow missionary disciple of St. Paul.  These two works, the Gospel and the Acts, represent 25% of the New Testament.  We are all tremendously indebted to this man.

Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator