Saint Luke the Physician – Silkscreen Print on Naturally Aged Wood – Mount Athos

Description

Icon of Saint Luke the Physician on Naturally Aged Wood

Saint Luke the Physician, Bishop of Simferopol, is depicted here on naturally aged wood in a unique composition. The icon has been crafted on aged wood and adorned with a decorated halo.

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

Archbishop Luke was born on April 27, 1877, in Kerch, at the easternmost part of Crimea. From a young age, he showed an interest in helping those in need, which led him to study medicine, viewing it as a field of social service. He married nurse Anna Vasilyevna, with whom he had four children. However, at the age of 38, he lost his wife to tuberculosis and never remarried, often visiting her grave.

He worked tirelessly, deeply dedicated to his dream: to save as many lives as possible, alleviating human pain and suffering. On many occasions, he reached the point of exhaustion but never gave up, drawing strength from long hours of prayer and devotion to Christ.

Saint Luke, as a physician, published forty scientific works. One of his classic works, published in 1934, is Essays on the Surgery of Pyogenic Infections, which laid the foundation for an entire medical specialty and continues to be used in medicine today. In 1946, he was awarded the Stalin Prize, the highest honor in pre-war Russia for scientific publications. He refused the award (an unimaginable reaction at the time) and donated the monetary prize from the Stalin Award to the poor.

Saint Luke was a devout Christian. He never missed a service and attended all the all-night vigils and matins on Saturdays, Sundays, and Orthodox feast days. In the operating room, he always had an icon of the Virgin Mary in front of him, praying for a few minutes before every surgery. Then, using cotton soaked in iodine, he would make the sign of the cross on the patient’s body at the site of the incision. Only after this did he formally say, “The scalpel.”

He endured terrible martyrdom, imprisonments, exiles, and persecutions due to his deep faith and unwavering confession of the Orthodox faith before courts or state officials. He fell asleep in the Lord on June 11, 1961. His body was placed for public veneration.

Since the icon is handmade and the woodwork is done by hand, there may be small variations in the wood, but not in the depiction.

The icon is available upon request.

Dimensions: 23 x 31 x 2