St. Luke

THE BELOVED PHYSICIAN
By St Jerome 6
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Luke, a physician from Antioch, who, as his writings show, was not
ignorant of the Greek language, was a follower of the Apostle Paul and his
companion on all his travels. he wrote the Gospel of which Paul says: “We have
sent also with him the brother, whose praise is in the Gospel, through all the
churches.” And to the Colossians, “Luke, the beloved physician, greets you.”
Also to Timothy, “Only Luke is with me.”

Likewise, he published another wonderful volume which bears the title
Acts of the Apostles. Its narratives continue up to the two years spent by Paul at
Rome, that is, up to the fourth year of Nero’s reign. From it we learn that the
book was composed in that city. Hence we are to relegate the journeys of Paul
and Thecla and the complete tale of the lion’s baptism to the apocryphal
writings. For how can it be that among all the rest of Paul’s deeds, Luke, the sole
companion of the Apostle, should be ignorant of this alone?

Even Tertullian, who lived close to that time, tells us that a certain priest
in Asia, an admirer of the Apostle Paul, when charged by John to be the author
of the book, confessed that he had done it out of his love for Paul, and he had
forthwith fallen dead on the spot. Certain ones suspect that as often as Paul says
in his Epistles, “according to my Gospel,” he refers to Luke’s work.

That Luke had learned the Gospel not only from Paul, who had not been
with our Lord in the flesh, but from the rest of the apostles, he himself declares
at the beginning of his book, saying: “those who were eyewitnesses and
ministers of the word have handed them down to us.” Consequently, he wrote
the Gospel as he had heard it , while he composed the Acts of the Apostles
according as he had himself seen.

6
from The Lessons of the Temporal Cycle and the Principal feasts of the Sanctoral Cycle According to the Monastic Breviary,
compiled and adapted for the Office of the Brothers of St. Meinrad’s Abbey, St. Meinrad, IN, 1943, pp. 483-484.