The relics of Saint Luke Archbishop of Simferopol were translated on this day in 1996. Saint Luke of Simferopol served people throughout his life – as a doctor in the first part of his life and as a surgeon, priest, and bishop in the second. Valentin Voino-Iasenetskii was born in 1877 and grew up in a family with a mixed religious background: his father was Roman Catholic, and his mother was Russian Orthodox. In families like his, according to the laws of the Russian Empire (with the exception of Finland), a child should have been brought up in the Orthodox faith. After graduating from the university in Kiev, he decided to work as a rural doctor. From 1915 to 1917, he performed multiple surgeries, serving regular folks and the needy in a number of Russian provinces. During World War I, Dr. Voino-Iasentskii began to feel more strongly about his Christian identity. In 1919, his wife Anna passed away from tuberculosis, leaving him as a single father with four children to look after. In 1921, Valentin Filipovich was ordained to the holy priesthood by Bishop Innokentii (Pustynskii). In 1922, he joined the Renovationst schism. Fr. Valentin participated in the administration of the diocese along with other clergy. Under these extraordinary circumstances, Fr. Valentin was tonsured a monk and became Bishop of Turkestan in 1923. Unfortunately, he did not receive a theological education comparable with his medical one. On four occasions between 1924 and 1941, St. Luke went to prison for various durations. In 1941, he was released to work at a hospital in Krasnoiarsk, and after that, he served as a bishop of various sees. He died in 1961 while on the See of Simferopol in Crimea, having lost his sight three years before passing away. In 1923, in prison, St. Luke began the work on his magnum opus Essays on Purulent Surgery (Ocherki Gnoinoi Khirurgii). The book was published for the first time in 1934. It was written at a time when there were no effective antibacterial and anti-inflammatory drugs in the doctor’s toolbox. The effectiveness of the surgical operation determined the success of treatment and the outcome of the disease. The value of this work for medicine lies in the author developing a topographic-anatomical concept of surgical treatment of purulent diseases. God has performed many miracles in response to the prayers to St. Luke and his natural veneration inside Russia and throughout the rest of the world, from Thessaloniki to Jordanville. At the same time, he supported the Soviet Union and its foreign policy, as can be seen in this excerpt from a sermon he gave in 1948: “But, however important to the Americans their plans for economic and political world domination, however great the power of the dollar, this is not the only motive for their determination to resort to atomic bombs. More important is their fear of the inevitable imminence of socialism and communism. Only this fear can explain the fact that the [U.S.] government, which considers itself the most democratic of all, supports with all its might the most anti-democratic and even fascist governments of other countries.” To be fair, this sermon should be matched against the enthusiastic statements of ROCOR churchmen in support of the Nazis’ struggle with Bolshevism. Nevertheless, for me, this is yet further evidence of how problematic references to ideology in the Church can be. The full sermon can be found here: “K miru prizval nas Gospod,” [The Lord Called Us to Keep Peace] Zhurnal Moskovskoi Patriarkhii [Journal of Moscow Patriarchate], no 1, 1948. |
