Saint Paul’s Signal Grace: A Reflection for the Feast of Saint Luke

The Apostle to the Gentiles, St. Paul, suffered through beatings, imprisonment, rejection, and persecution throughout his ministry, but what must certainly have hurt him most was being abandoned by the people he once called friends. And it’s not just that these former friends didn’t stand by him for support; they left him in favor of the enticement of the “present world” (2 Tim 4:10).

Admittedly, what Paul had been asking of them was not very appealing; he was essentially requiring them to leave the comfort of their homes and families and to brave the elements, all in an attempt to convince a hostile group of people to accept a faith to which they were ill-disposed.

And even that would have been the least of their concerns. The far greater concern would have been their fear over the very real threats they faced: imprisonment, torture, and death. So we can understand and even have compassion for the ones who decided to leave. Perhaps it wasn’t just that they were “enamored” by “the present world.” Perhaps they simply didn’t want to die.

Whatever his friends’ reasons, Paul would have been left heartbroken. He truly would have thought his friends had been on board, that they were all in. For them to have abandoned the faith during the temptation of trial must have made Paul question whether his ministry would come to bear any fruit at all. If his closest friends could reverse course and jump ship so easily, what would that mean for the people Paul was trying to evangelize whom he barely knew? But Paul persevered in an overwhelming darkness, holding onto the glimmer of hope that God would reveal to him in a specific signal grace. What was the signal grace that God sent Paul?

Luke is the only one with me. (2 Tim 4:11)

God sent Luke. Now there is something about this grace that Paul could not see, but let’s start by looking at what it was about this grace that he could. 

When a controversial topic comes up in a public setting, there is a tendency for the loudest voice to “win” the debate. The reason? That loud voice tends to have the support of enough people that gives the debater the courage to carry on. That leaves the minority (perhaps even just one person) who disagree with the loud ones to remain silent for lack of support.

How do we find the courage to speak out when we are the only one to think a certain way? We generally don’t…unless we have a number “two”—just one other soul who will stand by our side, so we don’t have to face defending the truth all by ourselves. It’s the whole reason Jesus sent His disciples out “two by two.” For Paul, Luke is his number two. Luke is his signal grace. Luke is the one whom the Lord sent to give Paul just the strength he would need to carry on courageously.

Luke remaining with Paul is the hand of divine providence that Paul could see; what was the grace that he could not? Once again, the answer is: Luke. He was not just any number two. Through Luke, Our Lord provided a particular unseen grace to Paul.

Paul—and Luke himself, for that matter—could not see the grace that would come later, long after Paul would go on to the afterlife. It would be Luke, who remained with Paul when no one else would, who would record the events that would take place after the ascension of the Lord—a record of history now forever archived for every generation to come. Without Luke’s presence in Paul’s life, the world would not have known the majority of what took place among the evangelization efforts of the Apostles. And it is their example that shows us today what it means to spread the Good News.

Your friends make known, O Lord, the glorious splendor of your Kingdom. (Ps 145:12)

But the Acts of the Apostles isn’t the only gift of recorded salvation history that Luke has shared with the Church.

Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled. (Lk 1:45)

Luke’s recording of Mary’s visit with Elizabeth begins with Elizabeth greeting her cousin by proclaiming that the infant whom Mary is carrying in her womb is the “Lord.” One would think Mary’s reaction should have been, “Wow! That’s amazing that you knew that without me telling you—praise God!” Although this is essentially what Mary says (“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord…the Almighty has done great things for me”), it is certainly not the way in which she says it, nor is it all that Mary says (Lk 1:46-49).

Mary’s canticle is just that: a canticle, something in between a song and a poem. It is as if the one who recorded these words of Scripture made up a lovely sonnet to give God His due praise, as a way to “enhance” Mary’s actual, less poetic words of response to her cousin’s proclamation.

Except…there was nothing “made up” here by anyone. How do we know this? Because the writer of this particular Scripture passage is Luke, a man who received most of his information, historians tell us, from Mary herself. The evidence for this? Luke’s extraordinary details of the visit to Mary by the angel Gabriel, as well as the circumstances surrounding Jesus’ birth, not to mention Luke’s record of details intimate enough to inform us that Mary “pondered all these things in her heart” (Lk 1:51).

Luke himself writes that “those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning and ministers of the word have handed [the narrative of the events] down to us, I too have decided, after investigating everything accurately anew, to write it down in an orderly sequence”—and no one would have been more of an “eyewitness from the beginning” than Mary (Lk 1:2-3). Certainly, it must have been Mary who would have described to Luke the scene in which she meets Elizabeth. There is no logical reason Luke would have had to guess or fill in the blanks regarding the longest exhortation delivered by Mary ever recorded because Mary herself must have told Luke exactly what she had said.

Furthermore, there is no reason to think that Mary would have made up a lovely poem decades after the event, and then instructed Luke, “I didn’t actually say it this way, but this sounds so much better, so write this down.” No, Mary said what she said as recorded by Luke. Luke has left us with an account of Mary’s vocalized words that describe what she “treasured” in the silence of her heart (Lk 2:19). With so little spoken by Mary throughout the Scriptures, Luke has presented for us the one instance in which she shares with us a peek into her very heart! 

Thanks to Luke and the gift of his writing, all generations can discover for themselves the hidden “pearl of great price” in the story of our salvation history (Mt 13:46).

Borovikovsky, V. (1809). St. Luke the Evangelist [painting]. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.