St Luke
Today we keep the feast of St Luke. He was, writes Paul (Col 4.14), a physician. A physician, like a priest, gets to know humanity well. It is his privilege to accompany people through vulnerable, sometimes anxious stages of life. A good doctor becomes a good observer. That is quality amply expressed in Luke’s Gospel. Many of the best drawn profiles in the New Testament – the prodigal son, Zacchaeus, the woman bent double – are from his pen. His influence on our culture’s imagination is immense. It followed as a matter of course that he got a reputation for being a painter. To learn to see truly, to see ourselves and other people as we are, fragile but bathed in mercy, with a tremendous ability to transcend ourselves, to be transformed by God’s power, is an essential part of the Christian condition. Today we might ask: Do I see in this way? Do I want to learn to see in this way?
