The life of Luka Simferopol and Crimean is filled with a constant desire to help people physically. spiritually. The healer of the human body and soul, Saint Luke, the surgeon Voino-Yasenetsky, spoke of himself as “a scalpel in the hands of God.”
Thousands of people received healing through the hands and prayers of the Crimean confessor.
He left behind a whole galaxy of believing professionals - doctors who performed operations with the Lord's Prayer.
Biography of St. Luke of Crimea
The life of Saint Luke of Crimea is a vivid example of faithful service to God and people both during life and after death.
1877, Kerch, Crimea. Here, a third child, son Valentin, was born into the family of the Polish nobleman Felix Voino-Yasenetsky.
The Yasenetskys lived according to Christian canons, did everything for the comprehensive development of children and raising them in the faith.
Little Valentin showed talent as an artist; having matured, he decided to become a student at the St. Petersburg Art Academy.
Just one verse from the Bible, Gospel Matthew 9:37, which says that “the harvest is ripe, but there are not enough workers,” turned Valentine’s life upside down.
No prohibitions affected the doctor’s decision to help people. He is transferred by stage to the very north, then again to Turukhansk.
1926, the famous doctor-priest returns to Tashkent.
With the merciful blessing of Metropolitan Sergius, Saint Luke serves as suffragan bishop in Rylsk, then Yelets.
Having rejected the offer to head the department in Izhevsk, the holy father decided to retire, asking for a blessing for this. This decision will torment Valentin Feliksovich all his life, for he put service to people above the service of God.
His colleague, Professor Mikhailovsky, had a son who died, and his father decided to revive him by transfusing the blood of a living person. The experiment failed, the professor committed suicide.
Father Luke, who preached in the Church of St. Sergius, gave permission to bury a colleague who suffered from mental disorders according to church funeral rites.
The Soviet authorities accused Professor Voino of opposing materialism; he allegedly prevented the resurrection due to religious fanaticism.
Prison again. Constant interrogations, inhumane conditions, and a stuffy punishment cell completely undermined the bishop’s health. Protesting, Father Valentin went on a hunger strike, which he was persuaded to stop by deception. After which Dr. Voino was sent into exile for 3 years.
Until 1933, he worked in the Arkhangelsk hospital in the north, where Valentin Feliksovich was diagnosed with a tumor and was sent to Leningrad for surgery. Here, during the sermon, God reminded the holy father of his youthful vows.
New interrogations awaited the saint after Leningrad in Moscow. The authorities tried in every possible way to persuade the wonderful doctor to renounce his rank, but they received a firm refusal.
The Holy Father continued his scientific research, working after exile in Tashkent.
Important! 1934 gave the world a work of many years, “Essays on Purulent Medicine,” which became a classic of medicine.
“... my “Essays on Purulent Surgery” were pleasing to God, because they greatly increased the power and significance of my confession in the midst of anti-religious propaganda,” “The Holy Synod ... equated my treatment of the wounded with valiant episcopal service, and elevated me to the rank of archbishop.” V.Voino-Yasenetsky.
Despite his illness, Father Valentin continued to work until 1937.
Stalin's repressions and the Great Patriotic War
Faithful ministers of the church, along with millions of people, were subjected to repression carried out on the orders of Stalin. Bishop Luke did not escape this fate.
The creation of a counter-revolutionary church organization - this was the charge brought against the saint.
The cruel torture called “conveyor belt”, when a round-the-clock interrogation was conducted for 13 days under blinding spotlights, the subsequent hunger strike undermined the doctor’s state of mind, he incriminated himself by signing the charge.
Bishop Voino-Yasenetsky met 1940 in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, where he was allowed to operate and engage in science.
Even in wartime, Father Valentin, being an exile, remained faithful to the Lord God, serving as a bishop. Metropolitan Sergius, elected patriarch at the 1943 Council, ordains St. Luke to the rank of archbishop.
At the slightest easing of persecution for religion, the new archbishop, a member of the permanent Synod, begins to actively preach the Word of God.
1944, by wartime order, the chief physician moved to Tambov together with the hospital, continuing his medical activities, working on the publication of works on medicine and theology.
Luka Krymsky
The last years of the saint's life
The archbishop's archpastoral activity is marked by an award - a diamond cross, which is worn on the hood.
For patriotism shown during the war, Valentin Voino-Yasenetsky was awarded the medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945.”
His works “Late resections for infected gunshot wounds of joints”, “Essays on purulent surgery” were awarded the Stalin Prize.
At the end of the war, Bishop Luke headed the Crimean diocese, becoming the Archbishop of Simferopol.
The saint-doctor saw the main task in his ministry as love for people; he taught priests, by his own example, to be servants of God, emitting light.
Heart disease did not allow the doctor to stand at the operating table, but he continued consultations, did not refuse city and rural doctors, consulting for free on weekdays. The Archbishop of Simferopol served on weekends. During his sermons, the Holy Trinity Cathedral was always full of people.
The invaluable heritage of the saint - a doctor, the works of St. Luke (Voino-Yasenetsky)
Saint Luke left behind a real gift for his descendants, his literary heritage.
- “Essays on Purulent Surgery” remains a classic for all generations of doctors.
- The book “I Loved Suffering” describes the difficult path from the vocation of a doctor to the rank of archbishop; it is autobiographical.
- Volumes of sermons reveal the essence of the Gospel, showing the secrets of the Holy Book for the ordinary Orthodox person. Sermon “On Constancy in Prayer”
- The book “Spirit, Soul and Body” is a work that proves the connection between the spiritual state of a person and his state of the body. Professor Valentin Voino-Yasenetsky proves on a scientific level how to achieve peace of mind and gain physical health with the help of prayer.
- In the book “On the Family and Raising Children,” the Holy Father characterizes the basis of a healthy family, the right relationship between husband and wife, based on Holy Scripture. It leads the reader to God-fearing parenting.
Every book written by Archbishop Luke is a key that opens the door to the great power of God's healing through obedience, fasting, and prayer.
Miracles and healings given by the Saint - the doctor
To people who perform regular prayers, the saint has repeatedly appeared in visions of an archbishop or a doctor. Sometimes the image is so obvious that people who saw it claim that they saw the living ruler.
- Sometimes in a dream, patients experienced a condition during an operation, and the next morning traces of a scalpel were visible on their body. This was evidenced by a Greek who had an intervertebral hernia removed in a dream; the next morning he discovered that he was completely healthy.
- Operating doctors, who constantly pray before operations with the prayer to St. Luke, claim that during particularly difficult situations, supernatural power guides their hands.
- According to a resident of Livadia, after the accident a man named Luka constantly appeared to her son, persuading him to return to his mother. This family had never heard of the holy healer and had never prayed to him. The doctor, who heard this story, showed the boy the icon of the Holy Father, which was always with him. The boy immediately recognized his guest. Thanks to the miraculous intervention of the bishop, the boy not only did not have his legs amputated, but after many operations he was even able to master a bicycle.
There are many such testimonies, they are written down in books located at churches in which they pray to the Holy Icon of Luke.
Service to Saint Luke, Archbishop of Simferopol and Crimea
On June 11, the Orthodox world celebrates the memory of Saint Luke. People come to the holy ashes every day with a request
- help you gain faith;
- bless for the operation;
- grant healing;
Children are carried to the tomb of the Saint, the weak go, young and old come, everyone finds peace of mind, faith, healing after prayer and worship.
Advice! Prayer to Saint Luke, a confessor of the faith, a caring mentor and a talented surgeon, still helps those in need find a way out of difficult situations.
In many medical institutions, doctors begin their day with this prayer. Workers of social services and hospices consider St. Voino-Yasenetsky their heavenly patron.
Watch the video with a prayer to Luka Krymsky
Archbishop Luke (in the world Valentin Feliksovich Voino-Yasenetsky) - professor of medicine and spiritual writer, bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church; since 1946 - Archbishop of Simferopol and Crimea. He was one of the most prominent theorists and practitioners of purulent surgery, for a textbook on which he was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1946 (it was given by the Bishop to orphans). The theoretical and practical discoveries of Voino-Yasenetsky saved the lives of literally hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers and officers during the Patriotic War.
Archbishop Luke became a victim of political repression and spent a total of 11 years in exile. Rehabilitated in April 2000. In August of the same year, he was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church in the host of new martyrs and confessors of Russia.
Valentin Feliksovich Voino-Yasenetsky was born on April 27, 1877 in Kerch in the family of pharmacist Felix Stanislavovich and his wife Maria Dmitrievna and belonged to an ancient and noble, but impoverished Polish noble family. Grandfather lived in a chicken hut, walked in bast shoes, however, he had a mill. His father was a zealous Catholic, his mother Orthodox. According to the laws of the Russian Empire, children in such families had to be raised in the Orthodox faith. Mother was involved in charity work and did good deeds. One day she brought a dish of kutia to the temple and after the funeral service she accidentally witnessed the division of her offering, after which she never crossed the threshold of the church again.
According to the saint’s recollections, he inherited his religiosity from his very pious father. The formation of his Orthodox views was greatly influenced by the Kiev Pechersk Lavra. At one time he was carried away by the ideas of Tolstoyism, slept on the floor on a carpet and went out of town to mow rye with the peasants, but after carefully reading L. Tolstoy’s book “What is my faith?”, he was able to figure out that Tolstoyanism is a mockery of Orthodoxy, and Tolstoy himself is a heretic.
In 1889, the family moved to Kyiv, where Valentin graduated from high school and art school. After graduating from high school, he faced a choice of life path between medicine and drawing. He submitted documents to the Academy of Arts, but, after hesitating, decided to choose medicine as more useful to society. In 1898 he became a student at the Faculty of Medicine at Kyiv University and “from a failed artist became an artist in anatomy and surgery.” After brilliantly passing his final exams, he surprised everyone by declaring that he would become a zemstvo “peasant” doctor.
In 1904, as part of the Kyiv Medical Hospital of the Red Cross, he went to the Russian-Japanese War, where he received extensive practice, performing major operations on bones, joints and the skull. Many wounds became covered with pus on the third to fifth day, and at the medical faculty there were no even concepts of purulent surgery, pain management and anesthesiology.
In 1904, he married sister of mercy Anna Vasilievna Lanskaya, who was called the “holy sister” for her kindness, meekness and deep faith in God. She took a vow of celibacy, but Valentin managed to win her favor and she broke this vow. On the night before the wedding, during prayer, it seemed to her that Christ in the icon turned away from her. For breaking her vow, the Lord severely punished her with unbearable, pathological jealousy.
From 1905 to 1917 worked as a zemstvo doctor in hospitals in the Simbirsk, Kursk, Saratov and Vladimir provinces and practiced in Moscow clinics. During this time, he performed many operations on the brain, organs of vision, heart, stomach, intestines, bile ducts, kidneys, spine, joints, etc. and introduced a lot of new things into surgical techniques. In 1908, he came to Moscow and became an external student at the surgical clinic of Professor P. I. Dyakonov.
In 1915, Voino-Yasenetsky’s book “Regional Anesthesia” was published in Petrograd, in which Voino-Yasenetsky summarized the results of research and his rich surgical experience. He proposed a new perfect method of local anesthesia - to interrupt the conduction of the nerves through which pain sensitivity is transmitted. A year later, he defended his monograph “Regional Anesthesia” as a dissertation and received his Doctor of Medicine degree. His opponent, the famous surgeon Martynov, said: "When I read your book, I got the impression of the singing of a bird that cannot help but sing, and I highly appreciated it". For this work, the University of Warsaw awarded him the Chojnacki Prize.
1917 was a turning point not only for the country, but also for Valentin Feliksovich personally. His wife Anna fell ill with tuberculosis and the family moved to Tashkent, where he was offered the position of chief physician of the city hospital. In 1919, his wife died of tuberculosis, leaving four children: Mikhail, Elena, Alexei and Valentin. When Valentine read the Psalter over his wife’s tomb, he was struck by the words of Psalm 112: “And he brings the barren woman into the home as a mother who rejoices over children.” He regarded this as an indication from God to the operating sister Sofia Sergeevna Beletskaya, about whom he only knew that she had recently buried her husband and was infertile, that is, childless, and on whom he could entrust the care of his children and their upbringing. Barely waiting for the morning, he went to Sofya Sergeevna “with God’s command to bring her into his home as a mother rejoicing over her children.” She happily agreed and became the mother of four children of Valentin Feliksovich, who, after the death of his wife, chose the path of serving the Church.
Valentin Voino-Yasenetsky was one of the initiators of the organization of Tashkent University and in 1920 he was elected professor of topographic anatomy and operative surgery at this university. Surgical art, and with it the fame of Prof. Voino-Yasenetsky's numbers were increasing.
He himself increasingly found consolation in faith. He attended the local Orthodox religious society and studied theology. Somehow, “unexpectedly for everyone, before starting the operation, Voino-Yasenetsky crossed himself, crossed the assistant, the operating nurse and the patient. Once, after the sign of the cross, a patient - a Tatar by nationality - said to the surgeon: “I am a Muslim. Why are you baptizing me?” The answer followed: “Even though there are different religions, there is one God. All are one under God."
Once he spoke at a diocesan congress “with a big heated speech on one very important issue.” After the congress, Tashkent Bishop Innokenty (Pustynsky) told him: “Doctor, you need to be a priest.” “I had no thoughts about the priesthood,” recalled Vladyka Luke, “but I accepted the words of His Grace Innocent as God’s call through the bishop’s lips, and without thinking for a minute: “Okay, Vladyka! I will be a priest if it pleases God!”
The issue of ordination was resolved so quickly that they did not even have time to sew a cassock for him.
On February 7, 1921, he was ordained a deacon, on February 15, a priest, and appointed junior priest of the Tashkent Cathedral, while also remaining a university professor. In the priesthood, he never ceases to operate and lecture.
The wave of renovationism of 1923 reached Tashkent. And while the renovationists were waiting for “their” bishop to arrive in Tashkent, a local bishop, a faithful supporter of Patriarch Tikhon, suddenly appeared in the city.
It became Saint Luke Voino-Yasenetsky in 1923. In May 1923, he became a monk in his own bedroom with a name in honor of St. Apostle and Evangelist Luke, who, as you know, was not only an apostle, but also a doctor and an artist. And soon he was secretly consecrated Bishop of Tashkent and Turkestan.
10 days after his consecration, he was arrested as a supporter of Patriarch Tikhon. He was charged with an absurd charge: relations with the Orenburg counter-revolutionary Cossacks and connections with the British.
In the prison of the Tashkent GPU, he completed his work, which later became famous, “Essays on Purulent Surgery.” On the title page the bishop wrote: “Bishop Luke. Professor Voino-Yasenetsky. Essays on purulent surgery."
Thus, God’s mysterious prediction about this book, which he received back in Pereslavl-Zalessky several years ago, was fulfilled. He then heard: “When this book is written, the name of the bishop will be on it.”
“Perhaps there is no other book like this,” wrote Candidate of Medical Sciences V.A. Polyakov, “that would have been written with such literary skill, with such knowledge of the surgical field, with such love for the suffering person.”
Despite the creation of a great, fundamental work, the bishop was imprisoned in the Taganskaya prison in Moscow. From Moscow St. Luka was sent to Siberia. It was then that for the first time Bishop Luke’s heart sank.
Exiled to the Yenisei, the 47-year-old bishop is again traveling on a train along the road along which he traveled to Transbaikalia in 1904 as a very young surgeon...
Tyumen, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk... Then, in the bitter cold of January, the prisoners were taken on a sleigh 400 kilometers from Krasnoyarsk - to Yeniseisk, and then even further - to the remote village of Khaya with eight houses, to Turukhansk... There was no other way to call it a premeditated murder it is impossible, and he later explained his salvation on a journey of one and a half thousand miles in an open sleigh in severe frost as follows: “On the way along the frozen Yenisei in severe frosts, I almost really felt that Jesus Christ Himself was with me, supporting and strengthening me”...
In Yeniseisk, the arrival of the bishop-doctor caused a sensation. Admiration for him reached its apogee when he performed congenital cataract extraction on three blind little boy brothers and made them sighted.
The children of Bishop Luke paid in full for their father’s “priestship.” Immediately after the first arrest, they were kicked out of the apartment. Then they will be required to renounce their father, they will be expelled from the institute, “harassed” at work and in the service, the stigma of political unreliability will haunt them for many years... His sons followed in their father’s footsteps, choosing medicine, but none of the four shared his passion faith in Christ.
In 1930, there followed a second arrest and a second, three-year exile, after returning from which he became blind in one eye, followed by a third in 1937, when the most terrible period for the Holy Church began, which claimed the lives of many, many faithful clergy. For the first time, Vladyka learned what torture was, interrogation on a conveyor belt, when investigators took turns for days, kicked each other, and screamed furiously.
Hallucinations began: yellow chickens were running along the floor; below, in a huge depression, a city could be seen, brightly flooded with the light of lanterns; snakes were crawling along the back. But the sorrows Bishop Luke experienced did not suppress him at all, but, on the contrary, strengthened and strengthened his soul. The Bishop knelt down twice a day, facing the east, and prayed, not noticing anything around him. The cell, filled to capacity with exhausted, embittered people, suddenly became quiet. He was again exiled to Siberia, one hundred and tenth kilometer from Krasnoyarsk.
The outbreak of World War II found 64-year-old Bishop Luka Voino-Yasenetsky in his third exile. He sends a telegram to Kalinin, in which he writes: “being a specialist in purulent surgery, I can provide assistance to soldiers at the front or in the rear, where I am entrusted... At the end of the war, I am ready to return to exile. Bishop Luke."
He is appointed a consultant to all hospitals in the Krasnoyarsk Territory - for thousands of kilometers there was no more necessary and more qualified specialist. The ascetic work of Archbishop Luke was awarded the medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945” and the Stalin Prize of the First Degree for the scientific development of new surgical methods for the treatment of purulent diseases and wounds.
The fame of Archbishop Luke became worldwide. His photographs in bishop's vestments were broadcast abroad via TASS channels. The Lord was pleased with all this only from one point of view. He considered his scientific activity, publication of books and articles as a means of raising the authority of the Church.
In May 1946, Vladyka was transferred to the post of Archbishop of Simferopol and Crimea. Students went to meet him at the station with flowers.
Before that, he served for some time in Tambov. The following story happened to him there. One widow woman stood near the church when the bishop went to the service. “Why are you, sister, standing so sad?” - asked the bishop. And she told him: “I have five small children, and the house has completely fallen apart.” After the service, he took the widow to his home and gave her money to build a house.
Around the same time, he was finally banned from speaking at medical congresses in bishop's vestments. And his performances stopped. He understood more and more clearly that it was becoming increasingly difficult to combine bishop and medical service. His medical practice began to decline.
In Crimea, the ruler faced a severe struggle with the authorities, who in the 50s closed churches one after another. At the same time, his blindness developed. Anyone who did not know about this would not have thought that the archpastor performing the Divine Liturgy is blind in both eyes. He carefully blessed the Holy Gifts during their transubstantiation, without touching them with either his hand or vestments. The bishop read all the secret prayers from memory.
He lived, as always, in poverty. Every time her niece Vera offered to sew a new cassock, she heard in response: “Patch, patch, Vera, there are many poor people.”
At the same time, the diocesan secretary kept long lists of those in need. At the end of each month, thirty to forty postal orders were sent to these lists. Lunch in the bishop's kitchen was prepared for fifteen to twenty people. Many hungry children, lonely old women, and poor people deprived of their livelihood came.
The Crimeans loved their ruler very much. One day at the beginning of 1951, Archbishop Luke returned by plane from Moscow to Simferopol. As a result of some misunderstanding, no one met him at the airfield. The half-blind ruler stood confused in front of the airport building, not knowing how to get home. The townspeople recognized him and helped him board the bus. But when Archbishop Luke was about to get off at his stop, at the request of the passengers, the driver turned off the route and, having driven three extra blocks, stopped the bus right at the porch of the house on Gospitalnaya. The Bishop got off the bus to the applause of those who hardly often went to church.
The blind archpastor also continued to rule the Simferopol diocese for three years and sometimes receive patients, astonishing local doctors with unmistakable diagnoses. He left practical medical practice back in 1946, but continued to help patients with advice. He ruled the diocese until the very end with the help of trusted persons. In the last years of his life, he only listened to what was read to him and dictated his works and letters.
The Lord passed away June 11, 1961 on the Day of All Saints, who shone in the Russian land, and was buried in the church cemetery at the All Saints Church in Simferopol. Despite the authorities' ban, the whole city saw him off. The streets were jammed and absolutely all traffic stopped. The path to the cemetery was strewn with roses.
Reliquary with the relics of St. Luke Voino-Yasenetsky in the Holy Trinity Cathedral of SimferopolTroparion, tone 1
To the proclaimer of the path of salvation, the confessor and archpastor of the Crimean land, the true keeper of fatherly traditions, the unshakable pillar of Orthodoxy, the teacher of Orthodoxy, the godly physician, Saint Luke, Christ the Savior, unceasingly pray to the unshakable Orthodox faith to grant both salvation and great mercy.
Kontakion, tone 1
Like an all-bright star, shining with virtues, you were the saint, but you created a soul equal to the angel, for this sake of holiness you are honored with the rank of rank, while in exile from the godless you suffered a lot and remained unshakable in faith, with your medical wisdom you healed many. In the same way, now the Lord glorified your venerable body, wondrously found from the depths of the earth, and let all the faithful cry out to you: Rejoice, Father Saint Luke, praise and affirmation of the Crimean land.
Luke (Voino-Yasenetsky Valentin Feliksovich), Archbishop of Simferopol and Crimea.
Born on April 27, 1877 in Kerch, in the family of a pharmacist.
His parents soon moved to Kyiv, where in 1896 he simultaneously graduated from the 2nd Kyiv Gymnasium at the Kiev Art School. The young man showed artistic talent, and a direction imbued with a religious idea emerged. Voino-Yasenetsky visited churches and the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, made many sketches of pilgrims, for which he received a prize at an exhibition at the School. He was going to enter the Academy of Arts, but the desire to bring direct benefit to the people forced him to change his plans.
Valentin Feliksovich studied for a year at the Faculty of Law, then moved to the Faculty of Medicine at Kyiv University.
In 1903 he graduated from the university with honors.
In January 1904, during the war with Japan, he was sent with the Red Cross hospital to the Far East and worked in Chita as the head of the surgical department of the hospital. Here Valentin Feliksovich met a sister of mercy, whom the wounded called the “holy sister,” and married her.
From 1905 to 1917 V.F. Voino-Yasenetsky worked as a zemstvo doctor in hospitals in the Simbirsk, Kursk, Saratov and Vladimir provinces and practiced in Moscow clinics. During this time, he performed many operations on the brain, organs of vision, heart, stomach, intestines, bile ducts, kidneys, spine, joints, etc. and introduced a lot of new things into surgical techniques. During the First World War, a religious feeling awakened in him, which had been forgotten behind a lot of scientific work, and he began to constantly go to church.
In 1916 V.F. Voino-Yasenetsky defended his dissertation in Moscow on the topic: “Regional anesthesia” and received the degree of Doctor of Medicine. The University of Warsaw awarded his dissertation a major Hajnicki Prize.
In 1917, Voino-Yasenetsky received a competitive position as chief physician and surgeon of the Tashkent hospital.
In 1919, his wife died of tuberculosis, leaving four children.
Voino-Yasenetsky was one of the initiators of the organization of Tashkent University and in 1920 he was elected professor of topographic anatomy and operative surgery at this university. Surgical art, and with it the fame of Prof. Voino-Yasenetsky's numbers were increasing. In various complex operations, he sought out and was the first to apply methods that later received universal recognition. His former students told wonders about his amazing surgical technique. Patients came to his outpatient appointments in a continuous stream.
He himself increasingly found consolation in faith. He attended the local Orthodox religious society, studied theology, became closer friends with the clergy, and took part in church affairs. As he himself said, he once spoke at a diocesan congress “on one very important issue with a big heated speech.” After the congress, Tashkent Bishop Innokenty (Pustynsky) told him: “Doctor, you need to be a priest.” “I accepted this as God’s call,” said Archbishop Luke, “and without a moment’s hesitation I answered: “Okay, Vladyka, I will.”
In 1921, on the day of the Presentation of the Lord, prof. Voino-Yasenetsky was ordained a deacon, on February 12 - a priest and appointed junior priest of the Tashkent Cathedral, while also remaining a university professor.
In May 1923, Father Valentin took monastic vows with the name Luke, in honor of St. Apostle and Evangelist Luke, who, as you know, was not only an apostle, but also a doctor and an artist.
On May 12 of the same year, he was consecrated secretly in the city of Penjekent as Bishop of Tashkent and Turkestan.
“Many people are perplexed,” said Archbishop Luke on the day of his eightieth birthday, April 27, 1957, “how could I, having achieved the glory of a scientist and a very prominent surgeon, become a preacher of the Gospel of Christ.”
“Those who think so are deeply mistaken, that it is impossible to combine science and religion... I know that among today’s professors there are many believers who ask for my blessing.”
It should be added that, upon accepting the priesthood, Prof. Voino-Yasenetsky received an order from Patriarch Tikhon, confirmed by Patriarch Sergius, not to abandon scientific and practical activities in surgery; and all the time, no matter what conditions he found himself in, he continued this work everywhere.
While in the North in 1923-1925, Bishop Luke drew attention to a local resident, Valneva, who used her remedies to cure some purulent inflammations that usually required surgical intervention. She made a mixture of some herbs mixed with earth and sour cream, and even treated deep-seated abscesses. Returning to Tashkent, Eminence Luke took Valneva with him and devoted a lot of time to laboratory research and scientific processing of her method, which gave him good results. The Tashkent newspaper "Pravda Vostoka" in 1936 or 1937 published an interesting discussion between him and some surgeons on this issue.
Bishop Luke did not forget his pastoral duties. All the numerous churches in the city of Yeniseisk, where he lived, as well as the churches in the regional city of Krasnoyarsk, were captured by the renovationists. Bishop Luke, with three priests accompanying him, celebrated the liturgy in his apartment, in the hall, and even ordained priests there who came hundreds of miles away to the Orthodox bishop.
From January 25, 1925 to September 1927, Bishop Luke was again Bishop of Tashkent and Turkestan.
From October 5 to November 11, 1927 - Bishop of Yeletsky, Vic. Oryol diocese.
From November 1927 he lived in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, then in the city of Krasnoyarsk, where he served in a local church and worked as a doctor in a city hospital.
In 1934, his book “Essays on Purulent Surgery” was published, which became a reference book for surgeons.
“Perhaps there is no other book like this,” wrote Candidate of Medical Sciences V.A. Polyakov, “that would have been written with such literary skill, with such knowledge of the surgical field, with such love for the suffering person.”
Bishop Luke himself defines his attitude towards the sick with a brief but expressive formula: “For a surgeon there should be no “cases,” but only a living, suffering person.”
In his biography and in the previously mentioned word on his eightieth birthday, Bishop Luke reports an interesting fact related to the work on this book. When, back in 1915, he conceived a book on purulent surgery and wrote the preface, an unexpected thought suddenly occurred to him: “This book will bear the name of a bishop.”
“And indeed,” he continues, “I intended to publish it in two issues, and when I finished the first issue, I wrote on the title page: “Bishop Luke. Essays on purulent surgery." For then I was already a bishop."
Continuing his scientific work, Bishop Luke did not give up his pastoral activities; he also worked to deepen his theological knowledge.
From the very first days of the Great Patriotic War until the end of 1943, Bishop Luka worked as the chief surgeon and consultant of the Krasnoyarsk evacuation hospital for the seriously wounded.
In the fall of 1942, he was elevated to the rank of archbishop with an appointment to the Krasnoyarsk see.
On September 8, 1943, he was a participant in the Council that unanimously elected Metropolitan Sergius Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus'. The same Council decided to excommunicate from the Church all bishops and clergy who betrayed their homeland and went over to the fascist camp, and to defrock them.
At the end of 1943, Archbishop Luka moved to Tambov. Although his vision began to noticeably
deteriorate, but he is actively working in evacuation hospitals, giving presentations, giving lectures to doctors, teaching them in word and deed.
In January 1944, he was appointed Archbishop of Tambov and Michurinsky.
By the time the archp. Luke in Tambov includes a page of memories about him by V.A. Polyakova. He's writing:
“One Sunday in 1944, I was called to Tambov for a meeting of the chiefs and chief surgeons of hospitals in the Voronezh Military District. At that time, I was the leading surgeon at a 700-bed hospital located in Kotovsk.
A lot of people gathered for the meeting. Everyone took their seats and the presiding chair stood up at the presidium table to announce the title of the report.
But suddenly, both doors opened wide, and a huge man with glasses entered the hall. His gray hair fell to his shoulders. A light, transparent, white lace beard rested on his chest. The lips under the mustache were tightly compressed. Large white hands fingered black matte rosaries.
The man slowly entered the hall and sat down in the first row. The chairman approached him with a request to take a place on the presidium. He got up, walked onto the stage and sat down in the chair offered to him.
It was Professor Valentin Feliksovich Voino-Yasenetsky." (Journal "Surgery" 1957, No. 8, p. 127).
At the end of 1943, the second edition of “Essays on Purulent Surgery” was published, revised and almost doubled in size, and in 1944 the book “Late Resections of Infected Gunshot Wounds of the Joints” was published. For these two works, Archp. Luka was awarded the Stalin Prize of the first degree.
There is information that he was a member of the Academy of Medical Sciences. However, there is no information about this in official biographies.
In addition to works on medical topics, Archp. Luke composed many sermons and articles of spiritual, moral and patriotic content.
In 1945-1947 he worked on a large theological work - “Spirit, Soul and Body” - in which he developed the question of the soul and spirit of man, as well as the teaching of Holy Scripture about the heart as an organ of knowledge of God. He also devoted a lot of time to strengthening parish life. In 1945, he expressed the idea of the need to elect a patriarch by lot.
In February 1945, for archpastoral activities and patriotic services, Archpriest. Luke was awarded the right to wear a cross on his hood.
In May 1946, he was appointed Archbishop of Simferopol and Crimea. In Simferopol, he published three new medical works, but his vision was getting worse. His left eye had not seen light for a long time, and at that time a cataract, complicated by glaucoma, began to mature on his right eye.
In 1956, Archbishop Luke became completely blind. He left practical medical practice back in 1946, but continued to help patients with advice. He ruled the diocese until the very end with the help of trusted persons. In the last years of his life, he only listened to what was read to him and dictated his works and letters.
About the character of the archbishop. Luke received the most mixed reviews. They talked about his calmness, modesty and kindness, and at the same time, about his arrogance, imbalance, arrogance, and painful pride. One might think that a person who lived such a long and difficult life, saturated to the limit with the most diverse impressions, could manifest himself in different ways. It is quite possible that his enormous authority in the field of surgery, his habit of unconditional obedience to others, especially during operations, created in him intolerance to other people's opinions, even in cases where his authority was not at all indisputable. Such intolerance and domineering could be very difficult for others. In a word, he was a man with the inevitable shortcomings of every person, but at the same time persistent and deeply religious. It was enough to see how soulfully, with tears, he performed the liturgy to be convinced of this.
Having taken up theological sciences at the age of over forty years, Archp. Luke, naturally, could not achieve such perfection in this area as in medicine; or what some other bishops achieved, devoting their entire lives only to theology. He makes mistakes, sometimes quite serious ones. In his main theological work, “Spirit, Soul and Body,” there are opinions disputed by many knowledgeable readers, and the article “On John the Baptist sending disciples to the Lord Jesus Christ with the question whether He is the Messiah” was generally banned and not published. But his sermons, to which Archp. Luke attached exceptional importance, considering them an integral part of the divine service, distinguished by simplicity, sincerity, spontaneity and originality.
I would like to quote an excerpt from his “Word on Good Friday.” The topic of the sermon is the main thing in Christianity. The best Christian preachers have spoken so much on this topic for 1900 years that it seems that nothing new can be said. And yet, the words of Archbishop Luke are touching, like something unexpected.
“The Lord was the first to take up the cross,” he says, “the most terrible cross, and after him, smaller, but often also terrible crosses, countless martyrs of Christ, took up their crosses. After them, huge crowds of people who, quietly lowering their heads, they went with them on a long journey.
On the long and thorny path indicated by Christ - the path to the Throne of God, the path to the Kingdom of Heaven, they have been walking and walking and walking for almost 2000 years, crowds and crowds of people have been following Christ...
“Well, are we really not going to join this endlessly marching crowd, this holy procession along the path of sorrows, along the path of suffering?
Shall we not take up our crosses and follow Christ?
Yes, it won't! ...
May Christ, who suffered so greatly for us, fill our hearts with His immeasurable grace.
Yes, He will give us at the end of our long and difficult journey the knowledge of what He said: “Be of good cheer! For I have conquered the world! Amen.”
If we remember that these words were spoken in the spring of 1946, when Archbishop. With heartache, Luke broke with the work of his whole life when he stood on the threshold of blindness, the inevitability of which as a doctor, he well understood - if you remember all this, then his words, his humble consent to take on a new and heavy cross, acquire a special meaning.
July 2, 1997 in Simferopol, the city where the saint lived in 1946-1961. A monument was unveiled to him.
On many icons, especially Greek ones, St. Luke is depicted with surgical instruments in his hands.
In 2000, at the anniversary Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church, the name of a man who is known as an outstanding scientist and world-famous surgeon, professor of medicine, spiritual writer, theologian, thinker, confessor, author of 55 scientific works was included in the Council of New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia for church-wide veneration. and 12 volumes of sermons. His scientific works on purulent surgery remain reference books for surgeons to this day.
Having the talent of an artist, he could lead a bohemian lifestyle, getting his hands dirty only with paints, but he became a “peasant doctor,” a priest, and a victim of political repression. He could exhibit his paintings in the best halls of the world, but he consciously chose the path of serving ordinary people, a path full of suffering, blood, sweat and pus. This path brought him not wealth and honors, but arrests, hard labor and exile, the farthest of which was 200 kilometers from the Arctic Circle. But even during his exile, he did not give up his scientific activities and managed to develop a new method for treating purulent wounds, which helped save thousands of lives during the Great Patriotic War.
Stalin Prize for children
After serving 11 years in Stalin's camps, the archbishop-surgeon was awarded the medal "For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War", the highest church award - the right to wear a diamond cross on his hood - and the Stalin Prize of the first degree in medicine.
In 1946, having become the Archbishop of Simferopol and Crimea and receiving this high state award, he donated 130 thousand of the 200 thousand rubles of the prize to help children who suffered during the war.
At the beginning of the war, Bishop Luke sent a telegram to M.I. Kalinin with a request to interrupt his next exile and send him to work in a hospital at the front or in the rear: “As a specialist in purulent surgery, I can help soldiers... At the end of the war, I am ready to return to exile.”
The answer came immediately. At the end of July, he was transferred to my native Krasnoyarsk, appointed consultant to all hospitals in the Krasnoyarsk Territory and chief surgeon of evacuation hospital No. 1515. Thanks to his brilliant operations, thousands of soldiers and officers returned to duty.
After 10-11 hours in the operating room, he went home and prayed, because in the city with a population of many thousands there was not a single functioning temple.
The bishop lived in a damp, cold room and was constantly hungry, because... The professors began to be fed in the hospital kitchen only in the spring of 1942, and he had no time to stock up on cards. Fortunately, the nurses secretly left him porridge.
Colleagues recalled that they looked at him as if he were God: “He taught us a lot. No one except him could operate on osteomyelitis. But there were tons of purulent ones! He taught both during operations and in his excellent lectures.”
Saint Luke Voino-Yasenetsky: “The wounded saluted me... with their feet”
The visiting inspector of all evacuation hospitals, Professor N.N. Priorov noted that nowhere had he seen such brilliant results in the treatment of infectious joint wounds as with Vladyka Luka. He was awarded a certificate and gratitude from the Military Council of the Siberian Military District. “I have great honor,” he wrote at the time, “when I enter large meetings of employees or commanders, everyone stands up.”
“The wounded officers and soldiers loved me very much,” wrote the professor, who had bright and joyful memories of those war years. “When I walked around the wards in the morning, the wounded greeted me joyfully. Some of them... invariably saluted me with their feet raised high.”
In the Krasnoyarsk Territory, the surgeon saint was in exile twice - in the early 1920s and at the turn of 1930-1940. From Krasnoyarsk, the bishop wrote to his son: “I fell in love with suffering, which so amazingly cleanses the soul.” As a native of Krasnoyarsk, I was proud to learn from the book by V.A. Lisichkin “The Military Path of St. Luke (Voino-Yasenetsky)”, that it was in my hometown that Bishop Luke became Archbishop of Krasnoyarsk and a permanent member of the Holy Synod.
On March 5, 1943, he writes a very bright letter to his son: “The Lord sent me unspeakable joy. After 16 years of painful longing for the church and silence, the Lord opened my lips again. A small church was opened in Nikolaevka, a suburb of Krasnoyarsk, and I was appointed Archbishop of Krasnoyarsk...” “The Holy Synod under the Locum Tenens of the Patriarchal Throne, Metropolitan Sergius, equated my treatment of the wounded with valiant episcopal service and elevated me to the rank of archbishop.” I think this is a unique case in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church.
When he left the Krasnoyarsk department, my mother was 5 years old, but my grandmother, who worked as a postman in Krasnoyarsk, could not help but hear about the bishop-surgeon, exiled to the Krasnoyarsk Territory (to the village of Bolshaya Murta). I was born in Krasnoyarsk after the death of St. Luke. Leaving my hometown after graduating from school, I had no idea about God or whether at that time at least one temple was open. I only remember the chapel towering over the city, which can be seen on ten-ruble banknotes.
I am glad that on November 15, 2002, my fellow countrymen erected a bronze monument in the center of Krasnoyarsk depicting Archbishop Luke with his hands folded in prayer. This is the third monument after Tambov and Simferopol. But only Krasnoyarsk residents or guests of the city can come to him. But residents of the Krasnoyarsk Territory and Khakassia come to another “Saint Luke” - a “health train” with a temple car for medical and spiritual help.
How people are waiting for this clinic on wheels, proudly bearing the name of one of the most outstanding figures of Russian medicine and the Russian Orthodox Church! Churches, whose representatives the Soviet government destroyed for decades, shooting, exiling to camps, and imprisoning them. But not all the inhabitants of Stalin’s camps were later awarded by the same government with the highest state awards.
Saint Luke Voino-Yasenetsky. Artist in Anatomy and Surgery
I first learned about St. Luke during a pilgrimage trip to Crimea, when I was already an adult. Later I read that St. Luke, through whose prayers people sick with a variety of diseases, including cancer, still receive healing, was born on April 27 (May 9, new style) 1877 in Kerch in the large family of the pharmacist Felix Stanislavovich, who came from from an ancient Russian noble family. At baptism, the baby was named Valentin (which means “strong, strong”) in honor of the holy martyr Valentin of Interam, who received the gift of healing from the Lord and then became a priest. Like his heavenly patron, he became both a doctor and a clergyman.
Archbishop of Tambov Luke, Tambov, 1944
And the future saint was named Luke during monastic tonsure in honor of the holy Apostle Luke, a doctor and icon painter.
During his 84-year life, this amazing man saved a huge number of hopeless patients, and he remembered many of them by sight and name. Vladyka also taught his students this kind of “human surgery.” “For a surgeon there should be no “case,” he said, “but only a living suffering person.” For the sake of this suffering man, Valentin Feliksovich sacrificed his youthful dream of becoming an artist.
After graduating from a gymnasium and an art school in Kyiv, during the entrance exams to the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, he suddenly decided that he did not have the right to do what he liked, “but he was obliged to do what was useful for suffering people,” i.e. medicine, because It was the Russian hinterland that needed medical help.
However, he nevertheless became an artist - “an artist in anatomy and surgery,” as he called himself. Having overcome his aversion to natural sciences, Valentin graduated from the Faculty of Medicine with flying colors and received a diploma with honors. But he preferred the position of a simple zemstvo doctor to a career as a scientist - a “peasant” doctor. Sometimes, having no tools at hand, he used a penknife, a quill pen, plumber's pliers, and instead of thread, a woman's hair.
Valentin Feliksovich Voino-Yasenetsky was widowed in 1919, having lost his beloved wife and mother of four children. In February 1921, during a terrible time of repression, when thousands of laymen and priests who rejected renovationism were in prisons, exiles and camps, the surgeon Valentin Feliksovich became a priest. Now he operated and lectured to students in a cassock and with a cross on his chest. Before the operation, he prayed to the Mother of God, blessed the patient and placed an iodine cross on his body. When an icon was once taken out of the operating room, the surgeon did not begin operations until the high authorities’ wife fell ill and the icon was returned to its place. He always spoke openly about his faith: “Wherever they send me, God is everywhere.” “I consider it my main duty to preach about Christ everywhere and everywhere,” he remained faithful to this principle until the end of his days.
In his autobiography, the surgeon saint wrote: “Nothing could compare in its enormous power of impression with that passage in the Gospel in which Jesus, pointing to the fields of ripened wheat to the disciples, said to them: The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; So, pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest (Matthew 9: 37-38). My heart literally trembled... “Oh God! Do you really have few workers?!” Later, many years later, when the Lord called me to be a worker in His field, I was sure that this Gospel text was God’s first call to serve Him.”
Saint Luke Voino-Yasenetsky: “In serving God all my joy”
“I have truly and deeply renounced the world and my medical fame, which, of course, could have been very great, which is now worth nothing to me. And in serving God all my joy, my whole life, for my faith is deep. However, I do not intend to leave medical and scientific work,” wrote Valentin Feliksovich to his son Mikhail. And again: “Oh, if you only knew how stupid and limited atheism is, how alive and real is the communication with God of those who love Him...”
In 1923, the famous surgeon took secret monastic vows and was elevated to the rank of bishop. He voluntarily and openly chose the path of the cross of martyrdom, suffering and heroism, the path of “a lamb among wolves,” which he never regretted.
One day, the head of the Cheka, Peters, asked the professor: “Tell me, priest and professor Yasenetsky-Voino, how do you pray at night and slaughter people during the day?” “I cut people to save them, but in the name of what are you cutting people, citizen public prosecutor?” the doctor answered. “How do you believe in God, priest and professor Yasenetsky-Voino? Have you seen your God?
“I really didn’t see God... But I operated a lot on the brain and, when I opened the skull, I never saw the mind there either. And I didn’t find any conscience there either. Does this mean that they don’t exist?”
Amid the laughter of the entire audience, “The Doctors’ Plot” failed miserably.
Vladyka Luka was not broken by numerous arrests, nor by years of prisons and Stalinist camps, nor by a 13-day “conveyor belt” interrogation when he was not allowed to sleep, nor by slander and expulsion. How many people have broken down in such conditions! But he did not sign anything and did not renounce the priesthood. According to him, he was helped along such a thorny path by the almost real feeling that he was supported and strengthened by “Jesus Christ Himself.”
Using the biography of St. Luke of Voino-Yasenetsky, you can study the history and geography of Russia. He survived the revolution, the Russo-Japanese War, the Civil War, two world wars, the Great Patriotic War, persecution of the Church, years of camps and exile.
Here are just some of the places where he happened to live: Kerch, Chisinau, Kyiv, Chita, Simbirsk, Kursk, Saratov, Vladimir, Oryol, Chernigov provinces, Moscow, Pereslavl-Zalessky, Turkestan, Tashkent, Andijan, Samarkand, Pejikent, Arkhangelsk, Krasnoyarsk , Yeniseisk, Bolshaya Murta, Turukhansk, Plakhino, Tambov, Tobolsk, Tyumen, Crimea...
Over the years, Bishop was Bishop of Tashkent and Turkestan (01/25/1925 - September 1927), Bishop of Yelets, vicar of the Oryol diocese (10/5/1927 - 11/11/1927), Archbishop of Krasnoyarsk and Yenisei (12/27/1942 - 02/7/1944), Archbishop of Tambov and Michurinsky (02/07/1944 – 04/5/1946), Archbishop of Simferopol and Crimea (04/5/1946 – 06/11/1961).
In the Tambov diocese, Bishop Luka simultaneously served in the church and worked as a surgeon in 150 hospitals for two years. Thanks to his brilliant operations, thousands of soldiers and officers returned to duty.
In 1946, the Bishop was appointed Archbishop of Simferopol and Crimea. Here he completes his work on the theological work “Spirit, Soul and Body,” in which attention is also paid to the teaching of the Holy Scriptures about the heart as the organ of knowledge of God. When Archbishop Luke became completely blind in 1958, he wrote to his daughter: “I refused the operation and humbly accepted God’s will for me to be blind until my death. I will continue my episcopal service until the end.”
On June 11, 1961, on the Day of All Saints, who shone in the Russian land, 84-year-old Archbishop Luke departed to the Lord. For three days, an inexhaustible stream of people came to say goodbye to their beloved archpastor. Many sick people at the grave of St. Luke received healing.
Memory 29 May / 11 June
From a book published by the Sretensky Monastery publishing house.
Saint Luke (in the world Valentin Feliksovich Voino-Yasenetsky) was born in 1877 in the city of Kerch, Crimea, into a noble family of Polish origin. Since childhood, he was interested in painting and decided to enter the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. However, during the entrance exams, he was overcome by doubt, and he decided that he did not have the right to do what he liked, but that he needed to work to alleviate the suffering of his neighbor. Thus, having read the words of the Savior about the laborers of the harvest (see: Matt. 9:37), he accepted the call to serve the people of God.
Valentin decided to devote himself to medicine and entered the medical faculty of Kyiv University. The artist's talent helped him in scrupulous anatomical studies. He completed his studies brilliantly (1903) on the eve of the Russian-Japanese War, and his career as a doctor began in a hospital in the city of Chita. There he met and married a sister of mercy, and they had four children. Then he was transferred to the hospital in the city of Ardatov, Simbirsk province, and later to Upper Lyubazh, Kursk province.
Working in hospitals and seeing the consequences that occur with general anesthesia, he came to the conclusion that in most cases it must be replaced with local anesthesia. Despite the meager equipment in hospitals, he successfully performed a large number of surgical operations, which attracted patients from neighboring counties to him. He continued to work as a surgeon in the village of Romanovka, Saratov region, and then was appointed chief physician of a 50-bed hospital in Pereslavl-Zalessky. There he still operated a lot, continuing to conduct scientific research.
In 1916, in Moscow, Valentin Feliksovich successfully defended his doctoral dissertation on the topic of local anesthesia and began working on a large monograph on purulent surgery. In 1917, when the roars of revolution thundered in big cities, he was appointed chief physician of the Tashkent city hospital and settled with his family in this city. Soon his wife died of tuberculosis. While caring for a dying woman, the idea came to his mind to ask his operating sister to take on the responsibility of raising the children. She agreed, and Dr. Valentin was able to continue his activities both at the hospital and at the university, where he taught courses in anatomy and surgery.
He often took part in debates on spiritual topics, where he spoke out refuting the theses of scientific atheism. At the end of one of these meetings, at which he spoke for a long time and with inspiration, Bishop Innocent took him aside and said: “Doctor, you need to be a priest.” Although Valentin never thought about the priesthood, he immediately accepted the hierarch’s offer. On the following Sunday he was ordained a deacon, and a week later he was elevated to the rank of priest.
He worked simultaneously as a doctor, as a professor and as a priest, serving in the cathedral only on Sundays and coming to classes in a cassock. He did not perform many services and sacraments, but he was zealous in preaching, and supplemented his instructions with spiritual conversations on pressing topics. For two years in a row, he participated in public disputes with a renounced priest, who became the leader of anti-religious propaganda in the region and subsequently died a miserable death.
In 1923, when the so-called “Living Church” provoked a renovationist schism, bringing discord and confusion into the bosom of the Church, the Bishop of Tashkent was forced to go into hiding, entrusting the management of the diocese to Father Valentin and another protopresbyter. The exiled Bishop Andrei of Ufa (Prince Ukhtomsky), while passing through the city, approved the election of Father Valentin to the episcopate, carried out by a council of clergy who remained faithful to the Church. Then the same bishop tonsured Valentin in his room as a monk with the name Luke and sent him to a small town near Samarkand. Two exiled bishops lived here, and Saint Luke was consecrated in the strictest secrecy (May 18, 1923). A week and a half after returning to Tashkent and after his first liturgy, he was arrested by the security authorities (GPU), accused of counter-revolutionary activities and espionage for England and sentenced to two years of exile in Siberia, in the Turukhansk region.
The path to exile took place in horrific conditions, but the holy doctor performed more than one surgical operation, saving the sufferers he met along the way from certain death. While in exile, he also worked in a hospital and performed many complex operations. He used to bless the sick and pray before surgery. When representatives of the GPU tried to prohibit him from doing this, they were met with a firm refusal from the bishop. Then Saint Luke was summoned to the state security department, given half an hour to get ready, and sent in a sleigh to the shore of the Arctic Ocean. There he wintered in coastal settlements.
At the beginning of Lent he was recalled to Turukhansk. The doctor returned to work at the hospital, since after his expulsion she lost her only surgeon, which caused grumbling from the local population. In 1926 he was released and returned to Tashkent.
The following autumn, Metropolitan Sergius appointed him first to Rylsk of the Kursk diocese, then to Yelets of the Oryol diocese as a suffragan bishop and, finally, to the Izhevsk see. However, on the advice of Metropolitan Arseny of Novgorod, Bishop Luke refused and asked to retire - a decision that he would bitterly regret later.
For about three years he quietly continued his activities. In 1930, his colleague at the Faculty of Medicine, Professor Mikhailovsky, having lost his mind after the death of his son, decided to revive him with a blood transfusion, and then committed suicide. At the request of the widow and taking into account the mental illness of the professor, Bishop Luke signed permission to bury him according to church rites. The communist authorities took advantage of this situation and accused the bishop of complicity in the murder of the professor. In their opinion, the ruler, out of religious fanaticism, prevented Mikhailovsky from resurrecting the deceased with the help of materialistic science.
Bishop Luke was arrested shortly before the destruction of the Church of St. Sergius, where he preached. He was subjected to continuous interrogations, after which he was taken to a stuffy punishment cell, which undermined his already fragile health. Protesting against the inhumane conditions of detention, Saint Luke began a hunger strike. Then the investigator gave his word that he would release him if he stopped his hunger strike. However, he did not keep his word, and the bishop was sentenced to a new three-year exile.
Again a journey in appalling conditions, after which work in a hospital in Kotlas and Arkhangelsk from 1931 to 1933. When Vladyka was diagnosed with a tumor, he went to Leningrad for surgery. There, one day during a church service, he experienced a stunning spiritual revelation that reminded him of the beginning of his church ministry. Then the bishop was transferred to Moscow for new interrogations and interesting proposals were made regarding scientific research, but on condition of renunciation, to which Saint Luke responded with a firm refusal.
Released in 1933, he refused the offer to head a vacant episcopal see, wanting to devote himself to continuing scientific research. He returned to Tashkent, where he was able to work in a small hospital. In 1934, his work “Essays on Purulent Surgery” was published, which soon became a classic of medical literature.
While working in Tashkent, the bishop fell ill with a tropical disease, which led to retinal detachment. Nevertheless, he continued his medical practice until 1937. The brutal repressions carried out by Stalin not only against right-wing oppositionists and religious leaders, but also against communist leaders of the first wave, filled the concentration camps with millions of people. Saint Luke was arrested along with the Archbishop of Tashkent and other priests who remained faithful to the Church and were accused of creating a counter-revolutionary church organization.
The saint was interrogated by a “conveyor belt”, when for 13 days and nights in the blinding light of lamps, investigators, taking turns, continuously interrogated him, forcing him to incriminate himself. When the bishop began a new hunger strike, he, exhausted, was sent to the state security dungeons. After new interrogations and torture, which exhausted his strength and brought him to a state where he could no longer control himself, Saint Luke signed with a trembling hand that he admitted his participation in the anti-Soviet conspiracy.
So in 1940, he was sent into exile for the third time, to Siberia, to the Krasnoyarsk Territory, where, after numerous petitions and refusals, he was able to obtain permission to work as a surgeon and even continue scientific research in Tomsk. When the invasion of Hitler's troops took place and the war began (1941), which cost millions of victims, St. Luke was appointed chief surgeon of the Krasnoyarsk hospital, as well as responsible for all military hospitals in the region. At the same time, he served as a bishop in the diocese of the region, where, as the communists proudly reported, there was not a single functioning church left.
Metropolitan Sergius elevated him to the rank of archbishop. In this rank, he took part in the Council of 1943, at which Metropolitan Sergius was elected patriarch, and Saint Luke himself became a member of the permanent Synod.
Since religious persecution had eased somewhat during the war, he embarked on an extensive program of reviving religious life, devoting himself with renewed energy to preaching. When the Krasnoyarsk hospital was transferred to Tambov (1944), he settled in this city and governed the diocese, while at the same time working on publication of various medical and theological works, in particular an apology for Christianity against scientific atheism, entitled “Spirit, Soul and Body.” In this work, the saint defends the principles of Christian anthropology with solid scientific arguments.
In February 1945, for his archpastoral activities, Saint Luke was awarded the right to wear a cross on his hood. For patriotism, he was awarded the medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945.”
A year later, Archbishop Luka of Tambov and Michurin became the laureate of the Stalin Prize of the first degree for the scientific development of new surgical methods for the treatment of purulent diseases and wounds, set out in the scientific works “Essays on Purulent Surgery” and “Late Resections for Infected Gunshot Wounds of the Joints.”
In 1946, he was transferred to Crimea and appointed Archbishop of Simferopol. In Crimea, he was forced, first of all, to fight the morals of the local clergy. He taught that the heart of a priest must become a fire, radiating the light of the Gospel and the love of the Cross, whether by word or by example. Due to heart disease, Saint Luke was forced to stop operating, but continued to give free consultations and assist local doctors with advice. Through his prayers, many miraculous healings occurred.
In 1956, he became completely blind, but from memory he continued to serve the Divine Liturgy, preach and lead the diocese. He courageously resisted the closure of churches and various forms of persecution from the authorities.
Under the weight of his life, having fulfilled the work of witnessing to the Lord, Crucified in the name of our salvation, Bishop Luke rested peacefully on May 29, 1961. His funeral was attended by the entire clergy of the diocese and a huge crowd of people, and the grave of St. Luke soon became a place of pilgrimage, where numerous healings are performed to this day.
Compiled by Hieromonk Macarius of Simonopetra,
adapted Russian translation - Sretensky Monastery Publishing House
