The Church is blessed to have four gospel accounts, four different documents that speak of coming to faith in Jesus. Each of the evangelists has as their goal not so much reporting what was back in the day but inviting us today to belief. Each of the gospel texts, therefore, contains not only what Jesus said and did but how what Jesus said and did impacted the first generations of believers (the gospels were written forty or more years after the events) and how the writer, the evangelist, expressed what faith in Jesus looks like. It is instructive to compare the different ways the evangelists tell the story of Jesus so see what they want to emphasize about belief. For example, St. Matthew records Jesus saying, “If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the good things to those who ask him?” St. Luke words the passage slightly differently that our heavenly Father will give “the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.” Luke and his church wanted to emphasize that the “good things” of God were not material but spiritual, having the Holy Spirit of love, peace, joy, hope, mercy is the gift God bestows upon us.
