Homily for the Feast of St. Luke, Evangelist

In this part of Paul’s second letter to Timothy, we encounter the loneliness Paul felt after Demas took off to explore Thessalonica, Crescens to Galatia, and Titus went off to Dalmatia. Paul sent Tychicus to Ephesus. He hoped that Timothy and Mark would join him and Luke as they continued their mission.

The very ordinary elements of this part of Paul’s letter are intriguing. He asks Timothy to pick up a cloak he left behind and bring some papyrus rolls and parchments. He also complains about how a coppersmith named Alexander treated him.

These few lines remind us that, in reality, the Apostles and early Christians were human, just as we are; they could be lonely, forgetful, and even a bit sensitive at times. They weren’t perfect, and they weren’t other-worldly. If they were, we couldn’t hope to be like them.

But we are called to be like them; we are called to be like the seventy-two that Jesus sends out on a mission in today’s Gospel passage; we are called to be people who have to navigate our own world with all of its attractions and still find a way to experience our faith, to live it out, and to bring it to others. We may not be called to do it as dramatically as those seventy-two disciples. Still, there are elements of their mission that we are called to both emulate and imitate.

Let us pray for the ability to sense the ways that God is calling on us to be His voice in our world today, and may the example of those fully human early disciples give us the inspiration we need to follow God’s call for us to go forth and to preach in His Name.