Sunday, 18 October, 2026 – 5 pm
The All Saints Choir will offer Choral Evensong for the feast of Saint Luke the Evangelist. The service features music by Maxine Thévenot, Herbert Howells, and William Harris.
According to tradition, Luke was a physician, and one of Paul’s fellow missionaries in the early spread of Christianity throughout the Roman world. He has been identified as the writer of both the Gospel that bears his name, and its sequel, the Acts of the Apostles. Luke seems to have either been a Gentile or a Hellenistic Jew and, like the other New Testament writers, he wrote in Greek, so that Gentiles might learn about the Lord whose life and deeds so impressed him. In the first chapter of his Gospel, he makes clear that he is offering authentic information about Jesus’ birth, ministry, death, and resurrection, as it had been handed down to him from those who had firsthand knowledge.
Luke was with Paul apparently until the latter’s martyrdom in Rome. What happened to Luke after Paul’s death is unknown, but early tradition has it that he wrote his Gospel in Greece, and that he died at the age of eighty-four in Boeotia. According to Orthodox Christian tradition, Luke was also the first iconographer. He is traditionally regarded as the patron saint of artists and physicians.
– from Lesser Feasts and Fasts, 2022