Saint Luke the Physician – Gold-embossed Icon – Mount Athos

Description

Gold-Embossed Icon of Saint Luke the Physician

Saint Luke, who was canonized in May 1996 by the Russian Orthodox Church, was a Russian archbishop and professor–surgeon.

Archbishop Luke was born on April 27, 1877, in Kerch, at the easternmost tip of Crimea. From a young age, he showed great compassion for those who suffered, which led him to study medicine—a profession he saw as a form of social service. He married nurse Anna Vasilievna, with whom he had four children. However, at the age of 38, he lost his wife to tuberculosis. He never remarried and visited her grave often.

He worked tirelessly, deeply devoted to his dream: to save as many lives as possible, relieving people from pain and suffering. In this pursuit, he often reached the point of exhaustion, but never gave up, drawing strength from long hours of prayer and his love for Christ.

As a physician, Saint Luke published forty scientific works. One of his most notable contributions, published in 1934, was the book *Essays on the Surgery of Pyogenic Infections*, which laid the foundation for an entire medical specialty. His work continues to be referenced in the field of medicine to this day. In 1946, he was awarded the Stalin Prize—pre-war Russia’s highest scientific distinction—for all his medical publications. Remarkably, he declined to attend the award ceremony (a nearly unthinkable act at the time) and donated the prize money to the poor.

Saint Luke was a devout Christian. He never missed a church service and would stand throughout all-night vigils, Matins, Saturdays, Sundays, and Orthodox feast days. In the operating room, he always kept an icon of the Virgin Mary, before which he prayed for a few minutes before each surgery. Then, using a cotton swab soaked in iodine, he would make the sign of the cross on the patient’s body where the incision would be made. Only after this sacred act would he solemnly say, “Scalpel.”

He endured great suffering, imprisonments, exiles, and persecution because of his deep faith and unwavering confession of Orthodox Christianity in the face of courts and state authorities. He passed away on June 11, 1961, and his body was placed for public veneration.

Origin: Mount Athos