Word to the Wise
Friday, October 18, 2024 - Oct. 18 - St. Luke, evangelist
[2 Tim 4:10-17b and Luke 10:1-9]The Lord Jesus appointed seventy-two disciples whom he sent ahead of him in pairs to every town and place he intended to visit. He said to them, "The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest....." [Luke]
The Gospel According to Luke is meant to be a "missionary manual" for all Christian missionaries both at the time it was composed and in our time as well. Without this gospel, we would have very little to go on about Jesus' origins as well as the spread of the gospel to all corners of the Roman empire (Acts). We would also be deprived of some of the best known parables of Jesus: the Prodigal Son, the Rich Man and Lazarus, the Rich Fool, and the Good Samaritan! These parables only appear in the Gospel According to Luke!
The gospel begins with the stories of the births of John the Baptist and Jesus and ends (taking Acts of the Apostles as volume two) in Rome! It is the story of a gradually expanding plan of God. Jesus first chooses the Twelve Apostles, but then he chooses 72 others. The number corresponds to a list of 72 known nations in the world of Jesus' time but given in chapter 10 of the Book of Genesis!
Luke's gospel also gathers the known experiences of missionaries in his time to communicate them to those in the field and those yet to come. It deals with lifestyle as well as possible persecution. The message is simple: God has visited his people in the person of Jesus Christ who proclaims a new "kingdom" of love and mercy. It is not a kingdom of political power and material wealth. The major vision of this gospel can be found in the two "canticles" at the beginning: the canticles of Mary (the "Magnificat") and Zechariah (the "Benedictus").
Today we celebrate with gratitude the gift of the Gospel According to Luke and its author who responded to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit (and speaks of it) to enable us to preach the story of God's plan of salvation. AMEN