You're listening to I Pray with the Gospel on the St. Jose Maria Institute podcast.

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

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me.

I adore you with profound reverence.

I ask your pardon for my sins and the grace to make this time of prayer fruitful.

My Immaculate Mother, St. Joseph, my father, and Lord. My guardian angel

intercede for me. The feast of St. Luke, a reading from Luke chapter 10. After this, the

Lord appointed 70 others, and sent them ahead of him two by two into every town and place where he himself was

about to come. And he said to them, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Pray therefore

the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. These 72 disciples couldn't be more different from one another.

They weren't a set of apostles in uniforms with written speeches to read in a particular tone of voice, all in the same way.

They were all different and had different talents, different accents, different ways of expressing themselves.

They were not an army of clones or robots

because God needs free and genuine disciples, not impersonators. St. Paul explains that God

called some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors, and some teachers.

St. Luke was a physician. He wasn't a skillful rhetorical speaker or a wise scripture scholar.

He was a faithful companion of St. Paul on his trips, absorbing his teaching on their missionary journeys.

There is something he was good at, writing. He was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write his gospel, and the book of

the Acts of the Apostles. He researched the life and preaching of our Lord, carefully interview

witnesses who are still living and collating all the necessary material. Almost half of the content in

his gospel is not to be found in the other Gospels.

To him we owe, for instance, the account of Jesus' infancy that he probably gathered from Our Lady.

...