18 October 2026 – St. Luke’s Day

Some people say that St. Luke was an artist. Perhaps he painted the oldest representation of Jesus in the world. It’s in the Catacombs. Certainly, he paints beautiful word-pictures and his writing has inspired the artists.

Christmas would not be the same without him. Nowhere else do we hear that Mary ‘laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn’.

And without him, we would not have known that ‘there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them …’

The literature of the world would have been greatly impoverished if St. Luke hadn’t recorded for us the two most famous and most beautifully written short stories in the world – the parable of the Good Samaritan and the parable of the Prodigal Son.

Each one nourishes our faith and every time we read them we discover something new about ourselves and our God. The one answers the question, ‘Who is my neighbour?’ with a word of compassion and an invitation to, ‘Go and do likewise.’

The other reveals the nature of God’s unconditional and undying love for us and roots it in the ordinary and yet extraordinary domestic environment of a farm and a father’s relationships with his two sons.

Without him, we wouldn’t have heard Simeon sing his song nor enter the house of Martha and Mary. We would never have spotted the little man up the tree nor walk with two disconsolate disciples along the little road to Emmaus. Nor would we have sat at table and recognised Jesus in the breaking of bread.