Holy Apostle and Evangelist Luke

Paul calls him 'Luke, the beloved physician,' and from the second century the Church has named him author of the third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles — together the largest single contribution to the New Testament. A Gentile of Antioch by common tradition, he joined Paul's travels (the 'we' passages of Acts read like his diary), stayed with him through imprisonment, and alone remained at the end: 'only Luke is with me.' His Gospel treasures what the others omit — the Annunciation and Magnificat, the shepherds, the prodigal son, the good Samaritan, the thief on the cross — which is why tradition says he learned much from the Theotokos herself. The later and beloved tradition that he painted the first icon of the Mother of God made him patron of iconographers. He is said to have died in Boeotia; his relics were translated to Constantinople in 357.