Wholesome Medicines

St Luke paints the Blessed Virgin, page from a Prayer Book, MS M.944, Italian c.1430, Morgan Library and Museum, New York

‘St Luke was not only the beloved physician: he was also an evangelist and physician of the soul. When he came into a room to visit a sick person, he was (if one may so speak) the clergyman and physician in one, bringing peace and health to body and soul alike: and by how much the soul is more precious than the body, and eternity worth more than time, by so much ought our praise and thanksgiving, this day, to go up more earnestly to Almighty God for his healing mercies in the Gospel, than even for all that he has done and is doing for our poor frail distempered bodies.
 
…[Christ] was manifested to take away our sins, to take our infirmities and bear our sicknesses, first by making himself one of us, then by suffering on the Cross the penalty due to our transgressions, and lastly by applying himself to us, one by one, to be the life and light, the righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, of each several Christian, man, woman and child: Christ dwelling in us and we in him. These are the wholesome medicines of the doctrines delivered by all evangelists and physicians of the soul, whereby, if it be not our fault, all the diseases of our souls may and will be healed: and in particular these are the medicines prescribed to us by Luke the beloved physician, seeing that in his Gospel the Incarnation of our Lord, the history of his Conception and Birth, is set forth more at large than in either of the other three’.

John Keble, 1792-1866

Almighty God, who didst call Saint Luke, whose praise is in the Gospel, to be an Evangelist and physician of the soul: may it please thee; that, by the wholesome medicines of the doctrine revealed by him, all the diseases of our souls may be healed; through the merits of Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, ​who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. - ​Divine Worship: The Missal.