Feast of Saint Luke, Evangelist
Today is the feast of St. Luke and today’s gospel concludes with these words, “cure the sick in [the town] and say to them, ‘The Kingdom of God is at hand for you.’” These words of Christ strike me as appropriate because of who St. Luke was and what that signifies for who we are called to be.
While St. Luke may not have been an eyewitness of Christ’s ministry, he was a disciple. He was both a disciple of Christ and a physician. This combination aligns perfectly with the verse quoted above. Christ’s words intimately weave together healing and the proclamation of the personal nature of the Kingdom of God. I believe that using this passage on the feast of St. Luke, disciple and evangelist, has three implications for us.
First, as disciples we are called to be healers. For some vocations that might take a medicinal form, psychological form, or even miraculous form. But for a lot of us we might wonder about calling ourselves healers. But I think that we can be healers in the way that we let wounds in relationships heal. In the way that we practice, encourage, and accept forgiveness. Or especially in our ability to diagnose our own faults before they harm someone else. These are all acts of healing in some way, albeit small and more personal. Maybe we are called to heal things on a grander social scale. To heal the wounds in our society is as much an act of healing as the miraculous curing of cancer.
Second, we are to proclaim and communicate the Good News to others. We are to evangelize. As disciples we should not offer words without action, nor should our action be divorced from our proclamation. Sometimes it seems that we make an either/or of this. As if I can’t serve and proclaim at the same time. Whereas I think it is clearly a both/and. The healing of wounds and the proclamation of the Gospel finds its natural end in the human person, who is both body and soul. For what other reason would I heal, if not for the good of the body? And why else would I preach, if not for the good of the soul? Obviously, prudence dictates timing and style, but St. Paul’s statement, “Woe to me if I do not preach [the Gospel]”, leads me to suspect that there is no prudent divorce of our service from the Gospel.
Finally, I was particularly grabbed by the wording this translation offers. It reads, “Say to them, ‘The Kingdom of God is at hand for you.’” That combination of “Kingdom” and “for you” bring together another beautiful dichotomy that we find affirmed in our faith. The emphasis of both the communal and the personal. It is a personal invitation into the Kingdom of God. It makes clear that the Kingdom is not just some ethereal theological concept, but something for the individual to encounter. But one’s encounter of the Kingdom does not remain individualistic. There is something inherently communal in sharing the same king or in being disciples of the same teacher. To recognize that community is to recall the words of Bishop Caggiano who said, “Blood is thicker than water, and Grace is thicker than blood. And you and I my friends, through the great gift of baptism, are a family. And whether we like each other or not, is irrelevant. We are forever one family. And putting on that face of family to a wanting world is exactly what we have been asked to do. It is what makes us Catholic.” We are all personally invited into the Kingdom to live as God’s family.
I wish to close with questions that I am directing foremost at myself, and so they are all first person. Have I been taking on the call to be a healer, on a personal level and societal one? Have I done good deeds out of the desire to be thought of as a nice person or has it been for the proclamation of the Gospel? Have I understood the invitation to the Kingdom as being personal? Have I lost sight of the community to which I belong in God’s Kingdom?
St. Luke, pray for us.
-Spencer Hargadon