October 29, 2025

By Father William Muench
NCC columnist

Recently, I celebrated Mass honoring the Feast of St. Luke. St. Luke is known as the author of two New Testament books – one of the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. We know that St. Luke was not a part of the first generation of Christian disciples. He depended upon the traditions he received from those who were eyewitnesses, those who heard and remembered the words and activities of Jesus. It dawned on me that St. Luke had to use all the tactics and the careful work of a present day filmer of a documentary like Ken Burns.

Burns is a maker of films – documentaries – about all sorts of historical subjects, including one on baseball. He has to study the past to put together the stories of events like the Civil War; he must do interviews with historians. I mentioned baseball as the subject of one of his documentaries because each year near the end of a major league baseball season, I have a personal tradition. I decide to watch from the beginning of all the episodes about this history of baseball. That is exactly what I have been doing this past week.

I do enjoy the stories and the memories of the great baseball players from the past. I love to remember them all. I can also remember where I was when some outstanding incident happened. I can only imagine the intense work Ken Burns must do investigating the material for these films. So, you see this got in wondering how St. Luke worked to accomplish the writing of those two Scriptural books, searching for those stories from the past that he wanted to present to us.

I can only imagine St. Luke asking questions and listening carefully to all those who he met that had experienced Jesus, those who would remember Jesus teaching the people and his story telling – all those parables. St. Luke did write them all with such detail. He didn’t miss a thing.

St. Luke’s Gospel is simply magnificent literature. I know that many college literature courses include St. Luke’s Gospel – like his version of the Parable of the Prodigal Son. It is such a magnificent story from Jesus put in words by St. Luke. And I am thinking of the many parables that St. Luke captures for us, like the Parable of the Good Samaritan. St. Luke gives us the Lord Jesus’ message in a most magnificent way. St. Luke teaches us that God’s promises to Israel and all that Jesus accomplished was extended to the Gentiles.

We do know that St. Luke was with St. Paul and was personally involved in the early Christian community that he describes for us in the Acts of the Apostles. St. Luke was there, so he helps us understand the challenges that those first Christians faced, especially, St. Paul. He was with St. Paul on those long and difficult missionary journeys.

On that Feast of St. Luke, I realized that we really don’t pay much attention to the Acts of the Apostles. So that day I suggested to the folks at Mass – and now to you all – that we should make it our homework for the present to read the Act of the Apostles. This was our foundation as a Church. Finally, I want to offer my gratitude to St. Luke for his research and hard work to write for us in such magnificent detail and outstanding literature, for bringing to us the message of Jesus and his story. I’m also grateful for his gift to us of the St. Paul’s story and the details of his life and missionary activities. St. Luke laid such a great foundation for this Catholic Church of ours.