St. Luke the Evangelist

The beloved physician, a Gentile and a companion of St Paul on his journeys, who stayed with him when the others had left. He wrote the Gospel that begins with the Annunciation and the story of the Nativity as the Theotokos kept it in her heart, and its continuation, the Acts of the Apostles, in which his "we" marks the stretches of the journey he shared. Its parables of the prodigal son and the good Samaritan are his alone. Tradition makes him the first iconographer, painting the Mother of God from life, which the Church understands as a claim that the icon goes back to the Apostles. He died, by tradition, in Boeotia. Feast: October 18.