Jesus appointed seventy-two disciples whom he sent ahead of him with the instruction, ‘Let peace be your message…cure the sick and say to them kingdom of God is at hand before you.’  The biggest challenge faced by the disciples who were sent on mission must have been following the instruction given them by their master. How were they to indiscriminately preach the message of the kingdom? Would this not take them to places they were taught to avoid, to a people they had been indoctrinated to believe were unreceptive to the message of the kingdom? Were they not only to seek hospitality from their own kind? Uncomfortable and challenging as it was, this was to be the mission of Jesus and his disciples, at least according to the evangelist and disciple whose call and ministry we celebrate today.
Luke, a 1 ^st century Syrian physician from Antioch, was a gentile companion of St. Paul. It must have been from St. Paul that he not only got enough information to author both the Gospel that bears his name and the first half of the Acts of the Apostles (he was present from Acts 16:11ff), but also the shape of his Gospel account. Like Paul who understood himself as commissioned to preach the Good News to the Gentiles, the Gospel according to Luke is also oriented to gentile readership and as such preaches universality of salvation. But there is another trait of the Gospel that makes it suited to the central message of Jesus (the in-breaking of the kingdom): Luke’s preferential option for the poor and the marginalized.
Jesus’ mission was that of making present the kingdom of God (the kingdom had to be “felt” and “tasted,” so to speak). No group needed to hear this message more than those who were disenfranchised. It is a group than included the poor and hungry, the sick, women, children, and of course the gentiles. The Good News that Jesus brought them (and which the disciples were to disseminate to the ends of the world) was that God’s favor had come to rest upon these sons and daughters of God who had been disenfranchised by the society (cf. Luke 4:18ff). The poor and hungry were to be fed, the sick cured and healed, the lowly empowered, and those pushed to the margins brought back into the community. This is what was to make the message of the disciples “Good News.” For if the poor were still hungry, the sick still suffering, and the little ones pushed to the margins of the society, then one could not say with pride and conviction that the kingdom of God had arrived. 
The evangelist Luke understood the essence of the Gospel of Jesus Christ that he was fortunate enough to disseminate. He understood that the Gospel of Jesus Christ was Good News in action. He did not encounter the man Jesus in person, but he understood what he (Jesus) was about. From his efforts, not only has the Good News of the Lord Jesus Christ reached the ends of the world but has also changed the lives of countless men and women.