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Title: Letters to Luke
Author: Dr. Joe E. Holoubek
Paperback: 547 pages
Publisher: Little Dove Press
ISBN: 0975376624
$19.95
Available from your favorite bookseller
About Letters to Luke
Letters to Luke is the story of a doubter who becomes a believer, a man of science who becomes a man of faith. It emphasizes the healing power of forgiveness, respect for women’s spirituality and the sacredness of life.
The power of Letters to Luke lies in the author’s ability to write with authority – as if he and his beloved wife were living in the time of Christ and encountering Jesus for the first time. Their spiritual journey unfolds in letters to Luke of Antioch, a friend and fellow physician.
Letters to Luke takes place in Capernaum, Jerusalem, Jericho and Nazareth. The physicians Joseph and Elisa also accompany Jesus, his apostles and other followers on their journey from Galilee to Judea for Passover. This interactive map shows the Holy Land in the time of Jesus, Joseph, and Elisa.
It started after a severe illness during which the author was semiconscious for days. “At that time,” he recalls, “I had a dream that I was with Jesus in Nazareth.”
The author and his wife took more than more than 40 courses in Scriptures, theology, Biblical history and early Christianity. Other major sources of inspiration for this work were Pierre Barbet’s pioneering study, A Doctor at Calvary, and the research of John P. Jackson Ph.D. and Rebecca Jackson, co-founders of the Turin Shroud Center of Colorado.
About the Author
Dr. Joe Holoubek’s extensive list of published works includes articles on cardiology, medical ethics and health care of the clergy and religious. A crucifixion scholar, he and his wife, Dr. Alice Baker Holoubek, gave talks across the nation on the physical sufferings of Christ at Calvary. 
As members of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre, the doctors Holoubek toured the Holy Land. “To walk in the places where Jesus walked is an unforgettable experience,” says the author.
Dr. Joe is a distinguished member of the Catholic Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, an organization limited to 50 Catholic scholars of academic stature who have earned doctorate-level degrees.
A founder of LSU School of Medicine in Shreveport, Louisiana, he is former president of the National Federation of Catholic Physicians Guilds, the Louisiana Heart Society and Tri-State Medical Society.
Dr. Joe and Dr. Alice practiced internal medicine together for more than 40 years.
He is a graduate of the University of Nebraska College of Medicine. She was among the first women to graduate from LSU School of Medicine in New Orleans.
Dr. Alice and Dr. Joe met in 1937 during a summer fellowship at Mayo Clinic and wrote to each other almost daily until they married in 1939. Dr. Alice, who died in 2005, was Dr. Joe’s greatest source of inspiration.
Excerpt
From Letter 23
Our practice is growing, Luke. Word is spreading that Elisa and I have taken special training under Abraham of Jerusalem and we are getting patients from the surrounding villages and towns. I am no longer called “Joseph’s boy,” but am treated like a learned physician. But today a new healer came to town.
I know you, too, are accustomed to the wandering healers who arrive, set up a booth and sell a tonic, usually made of cheap wine and a few herbs, which they claim will cure every sort of disease. These charlatans come, stay a few days, then move on, leaving the patients still ill but now with empty pockets. However, this new healer seems different.
Elisa encountered him first. She came upon a crowd of people gathered around a man they said was healing people of afflictions for which we have no cure. A deaf person could now hear, and a lame man was on his feet and walking.
She entered the crowd and saw a man in his early thirties. His clothes were clean and neat but plain, unlike the fancy clothes that so many wandering healers wear. She watched as he went from person to person, speaking to them, touching them, looking deeply into their eyes. He did not examine them in any way nor did he give them any tonic. She did not witness any cures, but the people he touched seemed somehow changed. She hurried to the clinic to share word of this new healer in town.
“Abraham told us to be on the lookout for new methods of treatment,” she said. “This man seems to have something that we do not have. Come with me. Let us learn more.”
I know that Elisa is not easily fooled, so I decided to join her. We finished the work with our patients and went to find the new healer.
By the time we arrived the crowd had settled at the man’s feet. He was sitting and speaking to those gathered, like the wise men do in the Temple. He was not speaking of healing but of performing good deeds, caring for those who are poor or in need.
He had a kind expression and a pleasant smile. His hair was neatly groomed, parted in the middle and braided in the back of his head in the Galilean manner. And yet he was a little taller than most Galileans. His muscles were pronounced, as if he had done heavy work. With the scars on his hands I would place him as a carpenter by trade.
Luke, I cannot find the words in Greek to explain, but just looking at him, listening to him, gave me a feeling of confidence and trust. Whenever someone came close to the man and begged to be healed, he would talk to them quietly but intently. He did not ask questions as we do in trying to learn the history of an illness. He did touch them on the arm or shoulder. Then he would say something astonishing. “Your sins are forgiven. Go and sin no more.”
Luke, his words clearly had an effect on each of the petitioners. The distress lifted from their eyes and a peaceful look came over their faces. They kissed his hand and began to praise God for sending this healer. Elisa whispered to me, “I do not know this man, yet I feel I have seen him before.”
“As do I. But I cannot recall where we would have met.”
The crowd grew larger as word spread of the cures. But this stranger, this healer in plain clothes, somehow slipped away. Those who had gathered gradually left, still talking of what they had seen. We went to examine some of those he had touched.
“Look, there is the man with the withered leg,” Elisa said. “My father treated him with the paralytic disease when we were both children. Now he walks normally with both legs.”
“There is the woman who has been crippled in her back all of her life,” I added. “She is walking upright and straight.”
As we examined others, we found every case was the same. There was simply no explanation for these cures within our knowledge of medicine.
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The theme of the book is identifying and coping with our own inner struggles so that we may overcome the opposition of people. The book is basically a how-to manual about dealing with difficult personalities that we face on a daily basis. As Bishop Jenkins says, the truth is, people irritate one another, however those who irritate you are not meant to hurt you.
