by CCW | 17 October 2016 21:00
The Collect[1] for the Feast of St. Luke identifies him as an Evangelist and a Physician of the soul. Paul’s Epistle[2] from 2nd Timothy says that only Luke is with me but also refers to “books” and “parchments”, two forms of written media through which ideas are conveyed, namely, the codex and the scroll. The Gospel[3] from the last chapter of Luke’s Gospel reminds us of Luke’s interest and focus on Christ’s opening out to us the Scriptures for our understanding. It is a theme which is especially prominent in the season of the Passion and the Resurrection of Christ and in the readings from Luke in those seasons.
The image of Luke as a Physician of the soul is most apt. For most of the long Trinity Season, Luke is we might say the Church’s spiritual director and there is an intriguing and important feature to Luke’s writings, both his Gospel and the Book of the Acts of the Apostles attributed to him. That feature is wonderfully captured in the epithet which Dante uses for St. Luke, calling him appropriately enough, “scriba mansuetudinis Christi”, ‘the scribe of the gentleness of Christ’. It is I think an important insight into the character of his writing.
There is a quality of gentleness to the way in which Luke pictures Christ in his encounters with our humanity. It is not by accident that Luke is both the patron saint of doctors and artists, particularly painters. No one provides more compelling and vivid pictures of the Passion than St. Luke. Think of the power of his depiction of the Agony in Gethsemane and the way in which Luke reveals to us something of the inner turmoil and conflict in the soul of Christ, “on the night in which he was betrayed”. And, perhaps, even more there is the powerful scene of Peter’s betrayal. In Luke’s vivid account, “the Lord turned and looked upon Peter”. That look was enough to remind him of what Jesus had said about Peter denying Jesus three times. “And Peter went out, and wept bitterly.” It is a masterful and powerful moment, a picture of firm gentleness. Sometimes a look is more effective that spoken words. But what kind of look? A look of gentle compassion and understanding for the human condition, for the individual. A look that recalls us to truth, even through our tears.
Luke too gives us those powerful words and images about Mary, the mother of God, the one whose active acceptance of the Word of God leads to the Word made flesh. I am reminded of a remarkable painting by Roger Van der Weyden of St. Luke painting the Virgin. It or a copy from the same period hangs in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The painter portrays Luke as almost genuflecting before Mary who is nursing the child Christ. In his hand is a piece of paper. But is he painting a picture or providing as his Gospel does with so many word pictures?
Luke’s Gospel provides us with the Magnificat, the Nunc Dimittis, and with the Benedictus, canticles which adorn our liturgy in its fullness. I like to think of our Liturgy as opening out to us the Scriptures for our understanding and as drawing us into the presence of Christ in all of his sweetness and gentleness. We are called to Christ through the witness of the Saints and not the least through the witness and writings of St. Luke, Evangelist and Physician, word-artist and scribe of the gentleness of Christ. Our Liturgy is like the story of Christ on the Road to Emmaus where he opens us out to the understanding of the Scriptures about the necessity of the Passion and Resurrection of the Christ but even more makes himself known to us “in the breaking of the bread”. Such is the gentleness of Christ whose presence with us makes “our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the Scriptures”. And most surely so on the eve of his feast.
Fr. David Curry
Eve of the Feast of St. Luke
October 17th, 2016
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2016/10/17/sermon-for-the-eve-of-the-feast-of-st-luke/
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