Missing the Physician

Sermon for St Luke's Day

In the Gregorian Canon of the Mass, there are two places in which a whole host of our spiritual fathers and mothers are mentioned. One set of names occurs before the consecration and consists of the Apostles and Martyrs; the second occurs after the consecration and consists of more Apostles, Marrtyrs and Virgins. In neither list will you find the name of St Luke. For that matter, you won't see the name of St Mark. Why not?

[PAUSE]

To be fair, there are many names missing from the canon of the Mass. What of St Timothy, St Titus, or St Justin Martyr? To be fair, even when St Gregory writes the Canon down in the Sixth Century, the list of apostles and martyrs is huge. It is not supposed to be an exhaustive list, just a representative list.

We know that St Luke is from Antioch and probably heard the Faith from St Paul but we don't know whether he is Jew or Gentile. We know that he is a physician and that he is credited as being the first ikonographer. We have his Gospel which contains songs sung by Our Lady, St Zacharias and St Simeon, as well as the words of the penitent thief.

And yet, St Luke does not appear on the list and this really wouldn't bother him. The one thing that concerns him is that people know who Our Lord is. He writes his Gospel and the Acts for one reason alone and that is to bring people the facts of our Faith. Nothing else matters.

We cannot treat the lists of Apostles and Martyrs as a Hall of Fame: that's not how things work. We have to see the Church in them just as we encounter Our Lord in the words of St Luke.

The same is true of our lists of intercession in which we read the names of all those who are dear to us who are sick or have died. We don't remember them at the expense of the countless millions who are sick or have died; we remember the few in order to bring all those millions to God. The people whom we know become representative of all because we all share the same humanity with each other and with Our Lord Jesus Christ.

[PAUSE]

At the Mass, we are brought into the company of Heaven as our home. As we gaze upon Our Lord in the Holy Sacrament nothing else matters for God is here. Like St Luke we may not have seen Him walk the earth with the Apostles, but we see him in the lives of others and in their testimony to the truth. 

St Luke does not attend the Last Supper the night our Lord is betrayed. He attends it with us at the celebration of the Mass. That's where the Apostles and Martyrs who are mentioned either side of the consecration point: not to themselves but to Christ being present with us.

That is the nature of the Mass: no Christian is ever missing from it.