11/06/2026
SAINT LUKE THE DOCTOR
Saint Luke: Archbishop Luke was born on April 27, 1877 in Kerch, in the easternmost part of Crimea.
His life
His father, Felix Stanislavovich Vojno-Jasieniecki (Polish: Feliks Wojno-Jasieniecki), was Polish and Catholic, while his mother, Maria Dmitrievna née Kudrina (Russian: Мария Дмитриевна Кудрина), was Orthodox.
From a young age he showed interest in his suffering fellow human beings. Initially he was attracted by the activities of the Narodnik movement, but later he distanced himself from it and chose to study medicine, the practice of which he saw as a field of social service.
He began his studies in 1898 at the Royal University of St. Vladimir in Kiev.
In 1920 he was elected professor of anatomy and surgery at the University of Tashkent.
He married the nurse Anna Vasilievna, with whom he had 4 children.
At the age of 38 he lost his wife to tuberculosis. He did not remarry and visited her grave often, when the circumstances of his turbulent life allowed.
He worked tirelessly throughout the day on his scientific study, deeply focused on his dream: to save more and more lives, relieving man from pain and evil.
In this effort, he often reached exhaustion, but he did not give up, since he drew strength from long hours of prayer and his devotion to Christ.
He himself suffered terrible tortures, imprisonments, exiles and persecutions because of his deep faith and unyielding confession of his Orthodox faith before courts or state officials.
The doctor as a Christian
Saint Luke was always a faithful Christian.
He did not miss mass and attended all the pannychides and orthros, on Saturdays, Sundays and the days of Orthodox holidays, standing.
In the operating room, he always had the icon of the Virgin Mary, in front of which he prayed for a few minutes before each operation.
Then, with a cotton swab soaked in iodine, he made the sign of the cross on the patient’s body, where the incision would be made. Only after this did he solemnly say “the scalpel”. His atheist colleagues quickly got used to it and did not pay attention, while the religious found this very natural.
However, in the early 1920s, one of the control committees of the hospital where he worked at the time gave the order to take down the icon of the Virgin Mary, as a result of which Saint Luke refused to enter the operating room.
At the same time, the wife of one of the party cadres was admitted to the hospital as an emergency, and she asked to be operated on only by Voino-Yasenetsky, and so her husband promised him that if the operation was carried out, the icon would be in its place the next day.
The operation was successful, and the sick woman's husband kept his promise.
His Dormition and Canonization
He fell asleep on June 11, 1961.
The Archbishop's body was placed on public pilgrimage.
The authorities initially prohibited the procession of the deceased from the main streets of the city to the cemetery of the Church of All Saints, which caused public indignation. Eventually the authorities relented and the procession took place on June 13.
On March 17, 1996, his remains were brought back by Archbishop Lazarus and members of the research committee that dealt with his life, works and miracles, and on March 20 they were transferred to the Church of the Holy Trinity.
It is reported that 40,000 people attended the procession.
It is said that during the procession, the strong wind that was blowing at that time miraculously stopped immediately; also, healings of the sick are witnessed during the three days between 17 and 20 March. On 24-25 May 1996, great celebrations were held for his canonization by the Patriarchate of Russia.
His memory is commemorated on 11 June
