Simone Martini’s image of St Luke from the 1330s, which is in the public domain, shows us the saint, poised ready for writing his Gospel. He is also described in the Epistle to the Colossians as ‘Luke the beloved physician’. An ancient collect reads: ‘Almighty God, who calledst Luke the Physician, 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 delivered by him, all the diseases of our souls may be healed; through the merits of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord …’

May the ‘diseases of our souls’, serious though they may be, be healed ‘through the wholesome medicine’ of the Gospel; may St Luke pray for us all, and may God bless you this day.