FRIDAY OCTOBER 18, 2024
FRIDAY OF THE TWENTY EIGHTH WEEK OF THE ORDINARY TIME B
St Luke the Evangelist. (Feast)
Office: Proper of Feast,
2 Timothy 4:10-17
Luke 10:1-9
BEING A MESSENGER OF THE MESSAGE OF SALVATION
Every Christian has been committed the message of salvation to the world. It takes diligence and devotion to be a bearer or messenger of the gospel message. And Saint Luke, whose feast we celebrate today instructs us on this with his life and writings.
Coming from a studious background, and being a gentile from Antioch, Saint Luke devoted himself as a companion of Saint Paul and a chronicle writer of the message of Christ mission on earth. He learnt from his association with Saint Paul and other apostles and took the style of putting into use his intelligence and writing skills in composing the mission and salvific act of Christ on earth. By this writings, the gospel according to saint Luke and the Acts of the Apostles were written and left for us by Saint Luke.
In these books, which were originally one book, Saint Luke demonstrated his knowledge of the saving mission of Christ. The gospel and the Acts of the Apostles demonstrate his conviction on the universality of the Christian message, his testimony of the usefulness of all human being irrespective of gender, social status and ethnic identity to the saving mission of Christ. Being a gentile, he describes Jesus as the Saviour of the world and not just as a savior of the Jewish people alone. He made known all that Jesus said, did and lived for.
All these nuances were the personal conviction and belief of Saint Luke which he defended assiduously in these works. He did this work with total devotion and commitment to the task and mission of Christ and he so preached the word through his writings that many generations have gained from this by reading and studying these works.
He demonstrated also that our different gifts and endowments can be veritable tools to enhance the proclamation of the gospel of salvation. As a Gentile endowed with the knowledge of the languages of Aramaic, with fluency in written Greek, scholarly as a doctor and intellectually endowed with much writing skills, Luke put all these into use and gave us these works that have endured to this century.
And as a companion of Saint Paul, and a very generous person ready to make sacrifices for Christ, he left us with a priceless gift of these writings as a witness and evangelist of the Christian message and life.
As we celebrate the feast of Saint Luke, we are also urged and inspired to use all means at our disposal and our every God given gifts to propagate our faith in Christ, and be devoted and dedicated to the message of the gospel and give unreserved testimony to the word of Christ and his message to the world. This is our calling and our mandate as Jesus sends us again in today’s gospel message.
Heavenly Father, Saint Luke gave testimony by his life and writings of Christ and his salvific mission. Grant that we may be bearers of the good-news of salvation to our world in words, thoughts, actions, by the testimony of our lives and with all you have endowed us with. Grant that as companions, we may cooperate and collaborate with others to making Christ known, love and worship through Christ Jesus our Lord.
Fr Norbert Uchuno
