A saint's day
St Luke of Crimea
Also called St Luke the Physician
Valentin Voyno-Yasenetsky, born in Kerch in 1877, became a brilliant surgeon who resolved to be “a doctor for the poor.” Widowed during the Revolution, he was ordained and became Bishop Luke, and through arrest, prison and exile he went on operating, praying before every incision. As Archbishop of Crimea he kept healing and preaching even after he went blind, and he reposed in 1961.
The dates
- Kept on
- 11 June on both calendars
- Next
The New Calendar (the Greek, Antiochian, Romanian and Bulgarian churches, the OCA and most converts) keeps fixed feasts on the church date; the Old Calendar (the Russian, Serbian and Georgian churches, Jerusalem and Mount Athos) keeps them 13 days later. Pascha and the feasts that follow it are kept on the same day by both.
How the day is kept
Orthodox Christians pray to him before operations and in serious illness, and doctors and nurses keep his icon close.
On his feast in Simferopol, by long-standing tradition, the white coats of doctors are sprinkled with holy water.
Devotion to him is very strong in Greece, where he is known simply as Saint Luke the Physician.
Old-Calendar and New-Calendar churches keep his repose on the same civil day.
Name days
These names keep their name day on this feast: