Saint Luke, Patron of Artists
On this Feast of Saint Luke, we pause to reflect on the special vocation of the Evangelists to hand on the Good News of Jesus Christ. But, today's Feast, honoring the patron of artists, also reminds us of the essential place that literature, the visual arts, and music have always had in the spread of the Gospel in all times and places. Saint John Paul II highlighted this in his Letter to Artists , which was issued in preparation for the Great Jubilee, on Easter Sunday, April 4, 1999: In order to communicate the message entrusted to her by Christ, the Church needs art. Art must make perceptible, and as far as possible attractive, the world of the spirit, of the invisible, of God. It must therefore translate into meaningful terms that which is in itself ineffable. Art has a unique capacity to take one or other facet of the message and translate it into colours, shapes and sounds which nourish the intuition of those who look or listen. It does so...