Queen of the Americas Guild Annual Conference “Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mother of the Church”

Feast of Saint Luke, Evangelist

October 18, 2024

2 Tm 4, 10-17

Ps 145, 10-11. 12-13. 17-18

Jn 15, 16

Lk 10, 1-9

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

The grace of pilgrimage, the grace of renewed knowledge and love of Our Lord Jesus Christ, leads us to the Gospels, to the divinely-inspired proclamation of the Incarnation of God the Son, of His Birth, of His Public Ministry, of His Passion and Death, and of His Resurrection and Ascension to the Right Hand of God the Father. The deeper knowledge and love of Our Lord comes through hearing His Word and receiving His grace announced by His Word and poured forth into our hearts from His glorious-pierced Heart through the Sacraments. Pilgrimage instills in us the love of hearing and studying God’s Word, and of experiencing that Word in action in our lives, in prayer and through the Sacraments, and by the practice of a virtuous, a Christ-like, life.

Today, we celebrate the memory of Saint Luke the Evangelist, chosen by God to record, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the words and deeds of Our Lord, so that the hunger and thirst to know Our Lord might be satisfied with the truth and love which He alone offers to us. Saint Luke, of Greek descent from the ancient city of Antioch, an artist and a physician, was a close and faithful companion of Saint Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles. Dom Prosper Guéranger writes of Saint Luke: “Thy inspired pen taught us to love the Son of Man in His Gospel; thy [painter’s brush] portrayed Him for us in His Mother’s arms; and a third time thou revealdst Him to the world, by the reproduction of His holiness in thine own life.”[1]

As a physician, he had a particular sensitivity to the mystery of divine mercy and healing at work in the Life, Death, Resurrection and Ascension of Our Lord. He was careful to record our Lord’s Word about the apostolic labor of bringing in the harvest of souls, a labor of proclaiming Divine Truth and ministering Divine Love, especially to the sick. The two activities are inseparable: the Word proclaimed makes clear the source and substance of the love ministered, and the love ministered puts into action the Word proclaimed.

It is providential that the Feast of Saint Luke should fall during these days of pilgrimage to this place, sacred to Our Lady of Guadalupe, for the Annual Conference of the Queen of the Americas Guild. From her very first apparition, the Virgin Mother of God declared that she was appearing to manifest the mercy of God, incarnate in her Divine Son, in her words, “to give Him to all people in all my personal love” and to bring to them Him Who alone is their salvation.[2] At her final apparition, when Saint Juan Diego brought to Bishop Juan de Zumárraga the miraculous roses provided by Our Lady as a sign of the truth of her message, God wondrously imprinted her image on the mantle of Saint Juan Diego, so that she might continue her mission of announcing the mercy of God for all who would go on pilgrimage to gaze upon the Sacred Image.

Saint Paul wrote the words of today’s First Reading near the end of his life. He was a prisoner of the Roman government. Saint Luke, to whom he refers as “our dear physician” in the Letter to the Colossians,[3] remained with him in the last period of his life and at his death. The same Luke, who faithfully assisted Saint Paul, perhaps especially with his knowledge of medicine, later set forth, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, an account of the Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, drawing upon all that he had learned from Saint Paul and the other Apostles.

As with each of the Gospels, the Gospel of Saint Luke presents particular aspects of the infinitely rich mystery of the coming of the God the Son in our human flesh to redeem us from sin and to win for us everlasting life. No doubt, because of his physician’s eye, Saint Luke’s Gospel highlights the Divine Mercy incarnate in Our Lord Jesus Christ. We see a reflection of this emphasis in the Gospel passage for his feast. Saint Luke recounts the instructions of Our Lord to His disciples whom He sent out to preach the Gospel. Our Lord Jesus instructs the disciples to “heal the sick” in each place they visit as a first sign of the presence of the Kingdom of God in the world.[4]

There can be no question, from the study of the Gospels, that the care of the sick was foremost in the public ministry of Our Lord. So, too, in handing on His ministry to the Apostles and disciples, Our Lord insisted that the care of the sick must be at the heart of bringing the Gospel to all nations. Through the care of the sick, God the Father lifts up the weak and the suffering, healing their affliction and offering them life, even in death.

We carry out the care of the sick in the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, God the Son and Son of Mary – alive for us in the Church for the salvation of the world – , who healed the sick and raised the dead to life. We are ambassadors of God's mercy to a culture which seems to have lost the sense of medicine as the art of healing and seems to view healthcare as a business like any other business. In imitation of Saint Luke and with the help of his intercession, we are called to care for the sick as Christ the Divine Physician cared for them, with deepest respect for human life made in God's own image and likeness, with loving compassion toward suffering brothers and sisters in God's family.

In his Encyclical Letter Evangelium Vitae, on the inviolable good of human life, Pope Saint John Paul II reminded us of the intrinsically ethical nature of caring for the sick and promoting good health, particularly in a society strongly influenced by secularism and materialism.  He wrote:

A unique responsibility belongs to health-care personnel: doctors, pharmacists, nurses, chaplains, men and women religious, administrators and volunteers. Their profession calls for them to be guardians and servants of human life. In today's cultural and social context, in which science and the practice of medicine risk losing sight of their inherent ethical dimension, health-care professionals can be strongly tempted at times to become manipulators of life, or even agents of death. In the face of this temptation their responsibility today is greatly increased. Its deepest inspiration and strongest support lie in the intrinsic and undeniable ethical dimension of the health-care profession, something already recognized by the ancient and still relevant Hippocratic Oath, which requires every doctor to commit himself to absolute respect for human life and its sacredness.[5]

Let us pray today, through the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe and Saint Luke the Evangelist, that we may be “guardians and servants of human life,” ministers of God's compassionate love, His infinite mercy to our brothers and sisters whose lives are burdened by serious illness, special needs, or advanced years.

Through the Nine-Month Novena to Our Lady of Guadalupe, we ask Our Lady to intercede for the daily conversion of our hearts, which disposes us to overcome the darkness and sin in our lives and in society. As we come on pilgrimage to venerate Our Lady of Guadalupe, let us be confident that she will give to us her Divine Son Who promises eternal life to all who come to Him with a humble and contrite heart. Under her maternal care, let us be confident that our faithful witness to divine love and mercy will bear its good and lasting fruit in the lives of the individuals we serve and in society, in general.

In the Holy Eucharist we now offer, Christ makes sacramentally present the greatest act of God's mercy toward us: His Sacrifice on the Cross. Christ unites us to His Passion, Death and Resurrection for the salvation of the world. May the union of our hearts with the glorious Eucharistic Heart of Jesus inspire and strengthen us to be messengers and agents of Divine Mercy to our brothers and sisters who seek the healing and life which are only found in the Heart of Jesus. So may we, through the intercession of Saint Luke, enjoy an abundance of God’s grace to be good, faithful and generous in fulfilling God’s most sacred trust with us.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Raymond Leo Cardinal BURKE

[1] “Ce fils de l’homme que votre plume inspire nous fit aimer dans son Évangile, que votre pinceau nous montra dans les bras de sa Mère, vous le révélez une troisième fois au monde pour la reproduction en vous-même de sa propre sainteté.” Prosper Guéranger, L’Année liturgique, Le Temps après la Pentecôte, Tome V, 12^ème éd. (Tours: Maison Alfred Mame et Fils, 1925), p. 491. English translation: Prosper Guéranger, The Liturgical Year, Time after Pentecost, Book V, tr. The Benedictines of Stanbrook Abbey (Fitzwilliam, NH: Loreto Publications, 2000), p. 421.

[2] “… lo entregaré a las gentes en todo mi amor personal.” “Apéndice A, El Nican Mopohua,” Carl A. Anderson y Eduardo Chávez, Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. Madre de la civilización del amor, tr. Gerardo Hernández Clark (México DF: Random House Mondadori, 2010), p. 214, n. 28. [NM]. English translation: Carl A. Anderson and Eduardo Chávez, Our Lady of Guadalupe: Mother of the Civilization of Love (New York: Doubleday, 2009), p. 173, no. 28. [NMEng].

[3] Col 4, 14.

[4] Lk 10, 9.

[5] “Peculiaris profecto responsalitas committitur sanitatis ministris qui sunt: medici, pharmacopolae, aegrorum ministri, cappellani, religiosi viri et mulieres, administratores atque voluntarii adiutores. Eorum ipsorum munus eos custodes vitaeque hominis cultores constituit. In culturali socialique nostrae aetatis contextu, cum est periculum ne scientia et ars medica amittant suam germanam ethicam rationem, ipsi graviter aliquando sollicitari possunt ut artifices fiant in vita adulteranda, vel etiam mortis actores. Prae eiusmodi temptatione eorum responsalitas hodie maxima facta est suamque altissimam reperit incitationem firmissimumque adiumentum in interiore necessariaque  morali mensura medicae professionis, sicut iam illud semperque validum confirmavit Hippocratis iusiurandum, secundum quod cuique medico est adlaborandum pro absoluta vitae humanae reverentia eiusque sacra indole.” Ioannes Paulus PP. II, Litterae encyclicae Evangelium vitae, “De vitae humanae inviolabili bono,” 25 Martii 1995, Acta Apostolicae Sedis 87 (1995) 504, n. 89. English translation: Pope John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Evangelium Vitae (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1995), 0p. 158, no. 89.