Saint Luke The Evangelist Feast Day - 18 October

Quoted from Britannica [1]:

St. Luke, also called Saint Luke the Evangelist, (flourished 1st century CE [2]; feast day October 18), in Christian tradition, the author of the Gospel According to Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, a companion of St. Paul the Apostle, and the most literary of the New Testament writers. Information about his life is scanty. Tradition based on references in the Pauline Letters has regarded him as a physician and a Gentile. He probably accompanied Paul on several missionary journeys. He is a patron saint of physicians and artists.

Luke is first mentioned in the letters of Paul as the latter’s “coworker” and as the “beloved physician.” The former designation is the more significant one, for it identifies him as one of a professional cadre of itinerant Christian “workers,” many of whom were teachers and preachers. His medical skills, like Paul’s tentmaking, may have contributed to his livelihood; but his principal occupation was the advancement of the Christian mission.

If Luke was the author of the third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, the course and nature of his ministry may be sketched in more detail from both texts. He excludes himself from those who were eyewitnesses of Christ’s ministry. He indicates participation in the Pauline mission by the use of the first person in the “we” sections of Acts. They suggest that Luke shared in instructing persons in the Christian message and possibly in performing miraculous healings.

The “we” sections are analogous in style to travel reports found elsewhere in writings of the Greco-Roman period. They place the author with Paul during his initial mission into Greece—i.e., as far as Philippi, in Macedonia (c. 51 CE). It is there that Luke later rejoins Paul and accompanies him on his final journey to Jerusalem (c. 58 CE). After Paul’s arrest in that city and during his extended detention in nearby Caesarea, Luke may have spent considerable time in Palestine working with the apostle as the occasion allowed and gathering materials for his future two-volume literary work, the Gospel and the Acts. In any case, two years later he appears with Paul on his prison voyage from Caesarea to Rome and again, according to the Second Letter of Paul to Timothy 4:11, at the time of the apostle’s martyrdom in the imperial city (c. 66 CE).

[1] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Luke, quoted without subtitles, bold emphasis, hyperlinks and references.

[2] "CE (Common Era) is the secular equivalent of AD (anno Domini), which means 'in the year of the Lord' in Latin."  See https://earthsky.org/human-world/definition-common-era-bce-ce-bc-ad/#:~:text=CE%20%28Common%20Era%29%20is%20the%20secular%20equivalent%20of,are%20more%20prone%20to%20using%20the%20BCE%2FCE%20format.