October 18, 2025
Feast of Saint Luke,
Evangelist
Lectionary: 661
Reading
1
Beloved:
Demas, enamored of the present world,
deserted me and went to Thessalonica,
Crescens to Galatia, and Titus to Dalmatia.
Luke is the only one with me.
Get Mark and bring him with you,
for he is helpful to me in the ministry.
I have sent Tychicus to Ephesus.
When you come, bring the cloak I left with Carpus in Troas,
the papyrus rolls, and especially the parchments.
Alexander the coppersmith did me a great deal of harm;
the Lord will repay him according to his deeds.
You too be on guard against him,
for he has strongly resisted our preaching.
At my first defense no one appeared on my behalf,
but everyone deserted me.
May it not be held against them!
But the Lord stood by me and gave me strength,
so that through me the proclamation might be completed
and all the Gentiles might hear it.
Responsorial
Psalm
R. (12) Your
friends make known, O Lord, the glorious splendor of your Kingdom.
Let all your works give you thanks, O LORD,
and let your faithful ones bless you.
Let them discourse of the glory of your Kingdom
and speak of your might.
R. Your friends make known, O Lord, the glorious splendor of your
Kingdom.
Making known to men your might
and the glorious splendor of your Kingdom.
Your Kingdom is a Kingdom for all ages,
and your dominion endures through all generations.
R. Your friends make known, O Lord, the glorious splendor of your Kingdom.
The LORD is just in all his ways
and holy in all his works.
The LORD is near to all who call upon him,
to all who call upon him in truth.
R. Your friends make known, O Lord, the glorious splendor of your
Kingdom.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia,
alleluia.
I chose you from the world,
to go and bear fruit that will last, says the Lord.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
The Lord Jesus
appointed seventy-two disciples
whom he sent ahead of him in pairs
to every town and place he intended to visit.
He said to them,
"The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few;
so ask the master of the harvest
to send out laborers for his harvest.
Go on your way;
behold, I am sending you like lambs among wolves.
Carry no money bag, no sack, no sandals;
and greet no one along the way.
Into whatever house you enter,
first say, 'Peace to this household.'
If a peaceful person lives there,
your peace will rest on him;
but if not, it will return to you.
Stay in the same house and eat and drink what is offered to you,
for the laborer deserves payment.
Do not move about from one house to another.
Whatever town you enter and they welcome you,
eat what is set before you,
cure the sick in it and say to them,
'The Kingdom of God is at hand for you.'"
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/101825.cfm
Commentary on 2 Timothy 4:10-17; Luke 10:1-9
The Gospel
reading comes (appropriately) from Luke. It is a description of Jesus sending
out 72 disciples in pairs to every town and place that he himself was going to
visit. There is a tradition that Luke was one of these disciples, although
there is no way to confirm it as a fact. At the same time, what Luke describes
here must also have matched in many ways his own experience as a missionary in
the company of Paul during their journeys through Asia Minor and Greece and,
finally, in Rome.
Jesus
begins by reminding his disciples that there is a huge harvest out there and
that many workers are needed to bring it in. As he sends them out with a
message of love to the world, he warns them not to be surprised if they meet
with opposition. They will be like a flock of lambs among a pack of wolves.
Luke must have seen this happen many times in the company of Paul.
They are
to travel with the absolute minimum of belongings—not even a staff or
travelling bag. They are to walk in their bare feet and not to waste time
chatting idly with people they meet on the way. Much of this must have been
practised by Jesus himself, who did not even have his own bed to sleep in. When
they enter any house offering them hospitality, they are to wish God’s peace on
that house. But if they are not welcomed, they are to leave without a blessing.
And, on their travels, they are to stay in the one house, satisfied with
whatever is offered them. On the one hand, because of the work they are doing,
they deserve to be taken care of. At the same time, they are not to be hopping
from house to house in search of better conditions and more comfort.
Once
welcomed in any place, they are to preach Jesus’ message and bring healing to
all those who need it and they are to proclaim that:
The
kingdom of God has come near to you.
Of course,
this Kingdom or Reign of God is personified in Jesus himself who will be coming
to these places after his disciples. The Reign of God comes into existence when
people lead their lives according to the will of God—when they are people
filled with love and compassion, ready and eager to serve each other, attending
to people’s genuine needs and in general sharing with each other everything
they have.
We are
grateful to Luke for the wonderful picture of Jesus he has given us and for
telling us how Jesus’ disciples, especially Paul, put the gospel of Jesus into
action and brought the message of the Kingdom all the way to Rome, then the
capital and administrative centre of their world. And from Rome it would extend
to the furthest corners of our planet.
The First
Reading is taken from the Second Letter to Timothy. Here Paul, who is now a
prisoner in Rome and awaiting execution, complains of his loneliness and asks
Timothy, who seems to be in Ephesus, to come and join him. Many of his
companions (e.g. Demas) have left him or he has sent them (e.g. Tychicus) away
on some mission. However, one person is still with him and that is Luke.
Timothy is also asked to bring Mark along.
Paul
regrets that during his trial no one stood by him. In this, Paul’s experience
is not unlike that of his Master, Jesus. But through it all, God has stood by
him and given him the strength to complete his mission that all nations would
hear the message of the gospel.
Let us,
too, make the message of Luke’s Gospel and Acts part of us and be ready, even
in difficult circumstances, to live and spread it in all the situations of our
life.
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Saturday, October 18, 2025
Ordinary Time - Feast of the Evangelist Saint Luke
Opening Prayer
Lord, our help and guide, make
your love the foundation of our lives.
May our love for you express itself in our eagerness
to do good for others. You live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Gospel Reading - Luke 10: 1-9
The Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them out ahead
of him in pairs, to all the towns and places he himself would be visiting. And
he said to them, 'The harvest is rich, but the laborers are few, so ask the
Lord of the harvest to send laborers to do his harvesting. Start off now, but
look, I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. Take no purse with you, no
haversack, no sandals. Salute no one on the road.
Whatever house you enter, let your first words be, "Peace
to this house!" And if a man of peace lives there, your peace will go and
rest on him; if not, it will come back to you. Stay in the same house, taking
what food and drink they have to offer, for the laborer deserves his wages; do
not move from house to house. Whenever you go into a town where they make you
welcome, eat what is put before you. Cure those in it who are sick, and say,
"The kingdom of God is very near to you."
Reflection
Today, the feast of the
Evangelist Saint Luke, the Gospel presents to us the sending out of the seventy-two
disciples who have to announce the Good News of God in the villages and in the
cities of Galilee. We are the seventy-two who come after the Twelve. Through
the mission of the disciples Jesus seeks to recover the community values of the
tradition of the people who felt crushed by the twofold slavery of the Roman
domination and by the official Religion. Jesus tries to renew and organize the
communities in such a way that again they are an expression of the Covenant, an
example of the Kingdom of God. This is why he insists in hospitality, sharing,
communion, acceptance of the excluded. This insistence of Jesus is found in the
advice that he gave to his disciples when he sent them out on mission. At the
time of Jesus there were other movements which, like Jesus, were looking for a
new way to live and to live together, for example John the Baptist, the
Pharisees and others. They also formed communities of disciples (Jn 1: 35; Lk
11: 1; Ac 19: 3) and they had their missionaries (Mt 23: 15). But as we will see
there was a great difference.
•
Luke 10: 1-3 - The Mission. Jesus sends out the disciples to the places where he
wanted to go. The disciple is the spokesperson of Jesus. He is not the owner of
the Good News. He sends them out two by two. That favours reciprocal help,
because the mission is not individual, but rather it is a community mission.
•
Luke 10: 2-3 - Co-responsibility. The first task is to pray in order that God
sends laborers. All the disciples have to feel that they are responsible for
the mission. This is why I should pray to the Father for the continuity of the
mission. Jesus sends out his disciples as lambs in the middle of wolves. The
mission is a difficult and dangerous task; because the system in which the
disciples lived and in which we live was and continues to be contrary to the
reorganization of living communities.
•
Luke 10: 4-6 - Hospitality. Contrary to the other missionaries, the disciples of
Jesus should not take anything with them, no
haversack, no sandals; but they should take peace. This means that they have to trust in the hospitality of the
people; because the disciple who goes without anything, taking only peace,
indicates that he trusts in people. He thinks that he will be welcomed, and
people will feel respected and confirmed. By means of this practice the
disciple criticizes the laws of exclusion and recovers the ancient values of
life in a community. Do not greet anybody
on the way means that no time should be lost with things which do not
belong to the mission.
•
Luke 10: 7 - Sharing.
The disciples should not go from
house to house, but they should remain in the same house. That is that they
should live together with others in a stable way, participate in the life and
work of the people and live and live from what they receive in exchange, because the labourer deserves his wages. This
means that they should trust the sharing. Thus, by means of this new practice,
they recover an ancient tradition of the people, criticizing a culture of
accumulation which characterized the politics of the Roman Empire and they
announced a new model of living together.
•
Luke 10: 8 - Communion
around the table. When the Pharisees went on mission, they got ready. They
thought that they could not trust the food the people would give them that it
was not always ritually “pure.” For this reason they took with them a
haversack, a purse and money to be able to get their own food. Thus, instead of
helping to overcome divisions, the observance of the Laws of purity weakened
even more the living out of the community values. The disciples of Jesus should
eat whatever the people offered them. They could not live separated, eating
their own food. This means that they should accept sharing around the table. In
contact with the people they should not be afraid to lose legal purity. Acting
in that way, they criticize the laws which are in force, and they announce a
new access to purity, that it intimacy with God.
•
Luke 10: 9a - The acceptance of the excluded. The disciples have to take care of
the sick, cure the lepers and cast out devils (Mt 10, 8). That means that they
should accept within the community those who were excluded. This practice of
solidarity criticizes the society that excluded and indicates concrete ways for
this. This is what the pastoral ministry with the excluded, migrants and
marginalized does today.
•
Luke 10: 9b - The coming of the Kingdom. If these requests are respected, then
the disciples can and should shout out to all parts of the world: The Kingdom of God has arrived! To
proclaim the Kingdom is not in the first place to teach truth and doctrine, but
to lead toward a new way of living and living together as brothers and sisters
starting from the Good News which Jesus has proclaimed to us: God is Father and
Mother of all of us.
Personal Questions
•
Hospitality, sharing, communion, welcoming and
acceptance of the excluded: are pillars which support community life. How does
this take place in my community?
•
What does it mean for me to be Christian? In an
interview on T.V. a person answered as follows to the journalist: “I am a
Christian, I try to live the Gospel, but I do not participate in the community
of the Church.” And the journalist commented: “Then do you consider yourself a
football player without a team!” Is this my case?
Concluding Prayer
All your creatures shall thank you, Yahweh, and your faithful
shall bless you.
They shall speak of the glory of your kingship and tell of
your might. (Ps 145: 1011)
Practically
all we know of Luke (and it is not very much) comes from the New Testament. We
do not know the place or date of his birth. In Paul’s Letter to Philemon
(1:24), Paul refers to “Luke, my coworker”. In the Letter to the Colossians
(4:14) he speaks of “Luke, the beloved physician”, so it is taken that he was a
medical practitioner of some kind. In the Second Letter to Timothy (4:11) Paul
says, “Only Luke is with me”. He seems to have been a close companion of Paul
on some of his missionary journeys and on his final journey to Rome. This is
based on the belief that the Acts of the Apostles was written by Luke, and that
in Acts, a number of passages use the word “we”, suggesting the writer was a
companion of Paul (Acts 16:10-17; 20:5-15; 27:1—28:16).
As well as
being the author of Acts, Luke is also taken to be the author of the Gospel
bearing his name. The two works are linked by his statement at the beginning of
Acts that:
In the
first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and teach
until the day when he was taken up to heaven… (Acts 1:1)
Both books
are dedicated to someone named Theophilus, and no scholar seriously doubts that
the same person wrote both works, even though neither work contains the name of
its author.
A number
of assertions about Luke are based on a document believed to date (in part)
from the 2nd century:
Luke, a
native of Antioch, by profession a physician. He had become a disciple of the
apostles and later followed Paul until his [Paul’s] martyrdom. Having served
the Lord continuously, unmarried and without children, filled with the Holy
Spirit he died at the age of 84 years.
However, there
is no way that these statements can be historically verified. There are legends
that Luke was with Jesus as one of the 72 disciples, or that he was one of the
two disciples on the way to Emmaus on Easter Sunday, a story which,
incidentally, only appears in Luke’s Gospel. Based on the quality of the
writings attributed to him, Luke is thought to have been well-educated. The
Letter of Paul to the Colossians (4:11) seems to include Luke among the
non-circumcised companions of Paul and hence that he was a Gentile. In that
case, Luke would seem to be the only non-Jewish author of New Testament books.
Luke’s
Gospel has many special characteristics which perhaps tell us something about
the kind of person he was. Unique to him is the account of the circumstances
leading to the conception and birth of Jesus (Luke, chaps 1-2). As well, his
Gospel contains some of the most touching parables in the New Testament:
the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son;
the words of Jesus during his Passion to the
women of Jerusalem;
the so-called ‘Good Thief’.
Luke’s
Gospel, while presenting an all-or-nothing following of Jesus with an emphasis
on radical simplicity of life, at the same time places great emphasis on the
compassionate nature of Jesus. He focuses on Jesus’ praying before every
important phase of his public life, and there is an openness to the Gentiles to
whom the Gospel is especially directed.
Women
figure more prominently in Luke’s Gospel than in any of the others—the mother
of Jesus, her cousin Elizabeth, the sisters Mary and Martha, the widow of Nain,
and the striking story of the sinful woman in the house of Simon the Pharisee.
In the Acts of the Apostles, Luke is revealed as a very accurate observer,
skilfully linking the sacred events with secular history. Many of his details
have been confirmed by archaeology.
His
writings have received high endorsements from secular scholars:
“Luke is a
historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact
trustworthy…[he] should be placed along with the very greatest of historians.”
(Sir William Ramsay, archaeologist)
“Luke is a
consummate historian, to be ranked in his own right with the great writers of
the Greeks.”
(E.M. Blaiklock, Professor of Classics at Auckland University)
“In all,
Luke names thirty-two countries, fifty-four cities and nine islands without an
[factual or historical] error.”
(Professor Norman L. Geisler, Southern Evangelical Seminary)
However,
it should also be strongly emphasised that Luke did not write as a historian,
but as an evangelist. He proclaimed the message of Jesus as the Word of God to
the world. Some early Church documents say that Luke died in Thebes, the
capital of Boeotia. There is a tradition that he was a painter, and one
well-known icon of the Virgin Mary has been attributed to him, but with little
claim to historical accuracy. It is understandable why Luke should be made the
patron of artists and doctors.
When
represented with the other three evangelists, Luke’s symbol is an ox, perhaps
referring to the sacrifice in the Temple mentioned at the beginning of his
Gospel—the scene of Zechariah and the angel announcing the birth of John the
Baptist. The earliest pictures of him show him writing his Gospel, but in later
art works he is represented as painting the Virgin Mary. Both Constantinople
(Istanbul) and Padua in Italy claim to have his relics.
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