Archbishop of Luka - Valentin Feliksovich Voyno-Yasenetsky - Prelate of Luka - biography. Saint Luke (Voino-Yasenetsky): “The wounded saluted me ... with their feet

Christians look at things differently than most people. They even consider their own body as a temple of God. But since a person is afflicted with sin, the physical existence is burdened with ailments that cause many unpleasant moments. Even the apostles were forced to endure physical infirmities until the very last days. But still, you can receive the endowment - for this it is customary to pray to the saints. One of the most famous healers is St. Luke of Crimea.

body healer

An amazing fate awaited the boy who was born in April 1877 in Kerch. They named him Valentine. The family moved to Kyiv, where the fourth of five children showed artistic talent.

Father came from a noble Belarusian family, was a Catholic. But natural delicacy did not allow him to impose his beliefs on any of the family members. Mother was Orthodox, engaged in works of mercy.

In his youth, the future very rarely visited the temple. But even then, sacrifice arose in his soul, which later became the main feature of his character. When the question arose of which educational institution to go to, Valentine chose medicine so it brings more benefits to society. The ability to draw well was very useful to the young man during his studies at Kiev University. In his own words, he became "an artist in surgery".

Valentin Voyno-Yasenetsky was destined for a brilliant scientific career. But after graduating from high school, he expressed a desire to become an ordinary zemstvo doctor in order to treat ordinary peasants. It was in this that he saw his own destiny. I was never afraid of "black" work.

After finishing my studies, Valentin was admitted to the hospital. There he met his future wife. She was very religious, did not even want to get married. But the young doctor managed to get his way. In marriage with Anna, four children were born (all of them have already rested in God). The wife herself died at a fairly young age from consumption. This sad event aroused in the talented doctor an interest in church life, in God. He began to visit the temple often.

Soul healer

In 1920 the surgeon lived and worked in Tashkent, where he had moved earlier, in the hope that the southern climate would positively affect his wife's weakened health. However, it didn't help. Having lost his wife, the healer began to actively help in the affairs of the parish, which did not pass by the attention of the ruling bishop. He invited the widowed Voyno-Yasenetsky to take holy orders, to which he immediately agreed. Thus began his life for the glory of Christ.

In the same period, the first of many references begins. But the repressions could not shake the firmness of faith, even when the doctor had to live in a barrack with broken windows during the winter.

Crimean diocese

A year after the end of the Great Patriotic War, when the country was rising from ruins, by decree from Moscow St. Luke appointed Bishop in Crimea. The archbishop immediately aroused the dissatisfaction of local spies from the authorities, since he did not consider him in personnel matters.

Already a mature priest gives lectures for local doctors, advises employees of a military hospital. As throughout his life, he continues to combine prayer and scientific work, writes books. At the same time, the bishop had to restore the destroyed churches throughout the peninsula.

In 1955 the saint lost his sight as a result of which he ceased to operate. But during his long life, he managed to save tens of thousands of ordinary people - he restored the ability to see to many, the soldier saved them from amputation of limbs. And he warmed everyone with the warmth of his soul. The saint died in 1961, leaving the memory of himself among the people as a miracle worker. Despite the resistance of the authorities, the whole city came out to see off their beloved Vladyka, the solemn procession was accompanied by the singing of prayers.

Finding relics

The grave of the saint was at the Simferopol cemetery, not far from the temple. Pilgrims who came to this place healed from diseases. This forced the church authorities to carefully study the life of the archbishop and he was canonized as a saint.

The imperishable body was found in March 1996, solemnly transferred to the Cathedral in the name of the Holy Trinity. On the veil that covered the face of the deceased, an imprint of his face appeared.

In Simferopol, 2 monuments to St. Luca, there is a museum dedicated to his life and work. Many pilgrims come to the cathedral to venerate the relics of the saint of God, which exude a wonderful aroma.

Icons

A lot of photos of the doctor-bishop came to contemporaries, there are also videos, so today you can have a clear idea of ​​his appearance. The icons have a great portrait resemblance to the "original", although it should not be forgotten that they show a person renewed by Christ.

The earthly life of the saint lasted quite a long time (he died in 84), the icon painters depict an old man, whitened with gray hairs. He wears a bishop's vestment. In the left hand, either a staff or the Gospel. With his right hand, he gives blessings to believers. On the chest is a panagia with the image of the Virgin.

In life, the saint had poor eyesight and wore glasses. But in the Kingdom of Heaven people get rid of bodily infirmities. Therefore, a bishop who is already with Christ does not need glasses. On a number of images, Luka Krymsky is written with surgical instruments - they indicate the type of activity during his lifetime.

veneration

Exile for the Christian faith was a fatal sentence for many. Thousands laid down their lives for not denying Jesus. Many were subsequently rehabilitated, like St. Luke (in 2000). A few years earlier, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church recognized him as a saint, five years later he was numbered among the host of the New Martyrs of Russia and began to be commemorated in all churches of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The confessor has three holidays- June 11, December 28 (Cathedral of the Crimean Saints). He is especially honored in Greece, where holy Orthodoxy is the main religion. In honor of St. Luke, many temples were consecrated there. The silver shrine, in which the relics now lie, was sent by the monks of the Greek Orthodox Church. The relics of the saint are still kept in the Crimea, and in Moscow there is an icon with a particle - in the temple of the Iberian Icon of the Mother of God (on Ordynka).

Saint Luke - what you can pray for

• A healer is approached in case of bodily diseases. It doesn’t matter what kind of illness befell the believer — the confessor, by the power of Christ, is able to help from many physical ailments, as thousands of healed people tell about.
• Pregnant women pray that they will safely bear and give birth to a child. It's no secret that even today this natural event can be dangerous for both the mother and the baby.
• If you have a surgical operation, you should also turn to St. Luke of Crimea. There are many cases when he appeared to patients and himself performed the most complex operations.
• During the course of treatment, you can read a prayer to the saint so that he contributes to a speedy recovery.
• Luka Krymsky also helps during mental suffering, because he is known for his kindness to people. This can be seen even in his scientific works - people were not just faceless "diagnoses" for him, the saint always made sure that the patient felt calm, believed in the success of the operation.

Testimonies of Healings

The greatest healer is Jesus Christ, He gives His faithful servants the power to heal people without resorting to traditional medicine. St. Luke also had such a gift.

• One day a baby was brought to the saint, whose larynx was swollen. It was impossible to carry out the operation - the neoplasm was too large, the threat of damaging vital arteries. After a three-day prayer, the swelling subsided, then completely disappeared.
• One of the parishioners was preparing for amputation of limbs. I came for the last time to confess, to receive the blessing of Fr. Luke. He did not let the woman go, together they began to earnestly pray. A few days later, the legs began to heal quickly, the operation was canceled. The prayer of the saint helped save the woman's legs.

This is just a small list. Luka Krymsky did many other good deeds. Miracles continue to this day.

Conclusion

Luka Krymsky was a very talented surgeon - performed operations on the heart, intestines, returned the ability to see. At the same time, St. Luke was a priest, read sermons, led people to faith. How did he have enough strength for everything? Who, if not Jesus Christ Himself, put fire in his heart, instructed, supported and consoled?

The saint rested very little, trying to help as many people as possible. But the main thing he did carried the Christian faith throughout his life, not abandoning it even during the repressions. Faith and prayer helped the righteous man endure personal grief, exile, bodily weakness. Like a bright lamp, he showed the way to everyone who came to him. The path is not only to bodily, but also spiritual recovery.

50 years ago, a saint died, whose story - despite the recentness of years - remains understandable and close to all of us, and at the same time, it cannot but amaze. Saint Luke (Voino-Yasenetsky). A doctor who treated ordinary people, many of whom are still alive today; a professor who lectured to ordinary students, now practicing doctors. A political prisoner who went through exile, prisons and torture and ... became a laureate of the Stalin Prize. A surgeon who saved hundreds of people from blindness and himself lost his sight at the end of his life. A brilliant doctor and a talented preacher, sometimes rushing between these two callings. A Christian of great willpower, honesty and fearless faith, but not without serious mistakes along the way. A real man. Shepherd. Scientist. Saint…

Saint Luke is not yet as widely known as Patriarch Tikhon or the Martyr Grand Duchess Elizabeth. We bring to the attention of the reader the most striking facts of his extraordinary biography, which, it seems, would be quite enough for several lives.

“I have no right to do what I like”

The future "holy surgeon" never dreamed of medicine. But from childhood he dreamed of the profession of an artist. After graduating from the Kyiv art school and having studied painting in Munich for some time, he suddenly ... submits documents to the medical faculty of Kyiv University. “Short hesitation ended in the decision that I have no right to do what I like, but I must do what is useful for suffering people,” the archbishop recalled.

At the university, he amazed students and professors with his fundamental disregard for his career and personal interests. Already in his second year, Valentin was expected to become an anatomy professor (his artistic skills were just what came in handy here), but after graduating from the university, this born scientist announced that he would be ... a zemstvo doctor - the most unprestigious, difficult and unpromising occupation. Comrades on the course were perplexed! And Vladyka later confesses: “I was offended by the fact that they did not understand me at all, for I studied medicine with the sole purpose of being a village, peasant doctor all my life, helping poor people.”

"He makes the blind see..."

Valentin Feliksovich began to study operations on the eyes immediately after the final exams, knowing that in the village with its filth and poverty, a dazzling disease, trachoma, was rampant. Reception in the hospital seemed to him not enough, and he began to bring patients to his home. They lay in the rooms, as in the wards, Voyno-Yasenetsky treated them, and his mother fed them.
Once, after an operation, a young beggar, who had lost his sight in early childhood, regained his sight. About two months later, he gathered the blind from all around, and all this long line came to the surgeon Voyno-Yasenetsky, leading each other by sticks.

On another occasion, Bishop Luke operated on a whole family in which a father, a mother, and five of their children were blind from birth. Of the seven people after the operation, six became sighted. A boy of about nine years of age went out into the street for the first time and saw the world, which appeared to him in a completely different way. A horse was brought up to him: “See? Whose horse? The boy looked and could not answer. But, feeling the horse with a familiar movement, he shouted joyfully: “This is ours, our Mishka!”

The brilliant surgeon had an incredible capacity for work. With the advent of Voyno-Yasenetsky to the Pereslavl-Zalessky hospital, the number of operations performed has increased several times! After a while, in the 70s, the doctor of this hospital proudly reported: we do one and a half thousand operations a year - with the help of 10-11 surgeons. Impressively. If you do not compare with 1913, when one Voyno-Yasenetsky performed a thousand operations a year ...

Archbishop Luke surrounded by his flock.
Photo from the book by Mark Popovsky "The Life and Life of St. Luke (Voino-Yasenetsky), Archbishop and Surgeon" provided by the Orthodox publishing house "Satis"

Regional anesthesia

At that time, patients often died not as a result of an unsuccessful surgical intervention, but simply without undergoing anesthesia. Therefore, many zemstvo doctors refused either anesthesia during operations, or the operations themselves!

Archbishop Luca devoted his dissertation to a new method of pain relief - regional anesthesia (he received his doctorate in medicine for this work). Regional anesthesia is the most sparing in terms of consequences compared to conventional local and even more so general anesthesia, however, it is the most difficult to perform: with this method, an injection is made in strictly defined areas of the body - along the nerve trunks. In 1915, a book by Voyno-Yasenetsky on this topic was published, for which the future archbishop was awarded the Warsaw University Prize.

Marriage ... and monasticism

Once upon a time, in the youth of the future archbishop, the words of Christ were pierced in the Gospel: "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few." But about the priesthood, and even more so about monasticism, he probably thought even less than in his time about medicine. While working during the Russo-Japanese War in the Far East, military field surgeon Voyno-Yasenetsky married a sister of mercy - "holy sister", as her colleagues called her - Anna Vasilievna Lanskoy. “She conquered me not so much with her beauty, but with her exceptional kindness and meekness of character. There, two doctors asked for her hand, but she took a vow of virginity. By marrying me, she broke that vow. For violation of it, the Lord severely punished her with unbearable, pathological jealousy ... "

Having married, Valentin Feliksovich, together with his wife and children, moved from city to city, working as a zemstvo doctor. Nothing foreshadowed radical changes in life.

But one day, when the future saint began to write the book Essays on Purulent Surgery (for which he was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1946), he suddenly had an extremely strange, haunting thought: “When this book is written, the name bishop." That is what happened later.

In 1919, at the age of 38, Voyno-Yasenetsky's wife died of tuberculosis. Four children of the future archbishop were left without a mother. And for their father, a new path opened up: two years later he took the priesthood, and two more years later - monastic vows, with the name Luke.

The wife of Valentin Feliksovich Anna Vasilievna Voyno-Yasenetskaya (Lanskaya).

“Valentin Feliksovich is no more…”

In 1921, at the height of the Civil War, Voyno-Yasenetsky appeared in the hospital corridor ... in a cassock and with a pectoral cross on his chest. He operated that day and the next, of course, without a cassock, but, as usual, in a medical gown. The assistant, who addressed him by his first name and patronymic, replied calmly that Valentin Feliksovich was no more, there was a priest, Father Valentin. “Wearing a cassock at a time when people were afraid to mention a grandfather-priest in the questionnaire, when posters hung on the walls of houses: “The priest, the landowner and the white general are the worst enemies of Soviet power,” could either be a madman or a person infinitely brave. Voyno-Yasenetsky was not insane ... ”recalls a former nurse who worked with father Valentin.

He also gave lectures to students in priestly vestments, and in vestments he appeared at the interregional meeting of doctors ... Before each operation, he prayed and blessed the patients. His colleague recalls: “Unexpectedly for everyone, before starting the operation, Voyno-Yasenetsky crossed himself, crossed the assistant, the operating sister and the patient. Recently, he has always done this, regardless of the nationality and religion of the patient. Once, after the sign of the cross, the patient, a Tatar by nationality, said to the surgeon: “I am a Muslim. Why are you baptizing me?” The answer followed: “Though the religions are different, but God is one. Under God all are one.

Once, in response to an order from the authorities to remove the icon from the operating room, the head physician Voyno-Yasenetsky left the hospital, saying that he would return only when the icon was hung in its place. Of course, he was refused. But soon after that, the sick wife of the party chief was brought to the hospital, in need of an urgent operation. She said that she would only be operated on by Voyno-Yasenetsky. The local leaders had to make concessions: Bishop Luke returned, and the confiscated icon returned the next day after the operation.

Disputes

Voyno-Yasenetsky was an excellent and fearless orator - his opponents were afraid of him. Once, shortly after his ordination, he spoke in the Tashkent court on the "case of doctors", who were accused of sabotage. The head of the Cheka, Peters, known for his cruelty and unscrupulousness, decided to arrange a show trial out of this fabricated case. Voyno-Yasenetsky was called in as an expert surgeon, and, defending his colleagues sentenced to death, smashed Peters's arguments to smithereens. Seeing that the triumph was slipping out of his hands, the exasperated Chekist attacked Father Valentin himself:
- 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 do you cut people, citizen public prosecutor? he retorted.
The hall erupted in laughter and applause!
Peters did not give up:
- How do you believe in God, priest and professor Yasenetsky-Voino? Have you seen your God?
- I really did not see God, citizen public prosecutor. But I have operated on the brain a lot, and when I opened the cranium, I never saw the mind there either. And there was no conscience either.
The chairman's bell was drowned in the laughter of the entire hall. The “doctors’ case” failed miserably…

11 years in prison and exile

In 1923, Luka (Voino-Yasenetsky) was arrested on the preposterous standard suspicion of "counter-revolutionary activity," a week after he was secretly ordained a bishop. This was the beginning of 11 years in prison and exile. They let Vladyka Luka say goodbye to the children, put him on the train... but he didn't budge for about twenty minutes. It turns out that the train could not move, because a crowd of people lay down on the rails, wanting to keep the bishop in Tashkent ...

In prisons, Bishop Luka shared warm clothes with "punks" and received in return a kind attitude even from thieves and bandits. Although sometimes criminals robbed and insulted him ...
And once, while traveling through the stage, at an overnight stay, the professor had to perform an operation on a young peasant. “After severe osteomyelitis, which was not treated by anyone, he had the entire upper third and head of the humerus sticking out of a gaping wound in the deltoid region. There was nothing to bandage him with, and his shirt and bed were always filled with pus. I asked to find locksmith tongs and without any difficulty pulled out a huge sequester (a dead area of ​​bone - ed.).

"Butcher! Slaughter the sick!"

Bishop Luke was exiled to the North three times. But even there he continued to work in his medical specialty.

Once, having just arrived at the stage in the city of Yeniseisk, the future archbishop went straight to the hospital. He introduced himself to the head of the hospital, giving his monastic and secular (Valentin Feliksovich) name, position, and asked permission to operate. The manager at first even mistook him for a madman and, in order to get off, cheated: "I have a bad tool - there is nothing to do." However, the trick failed: after looking at the tools, Professor Voyno-Yasenetsky, of course, gave him a real - rather high - assessment.

A complex operation was scheduled for the next few days ... Having barely begun it, with the first wide and swift movement, Luka cut the patient's abdominal wall with a scalpel. "Butcher! He will stab the patient,” flashed through the head of the head, who was assisting the surgeon. Luka noticed his excitement and said: "Don't worry, colleague, rely on me." The operation went great.

Later, the head admitted that he was frightened at that time, but subsequently believed in the techniques of the new surgeon. “These are not my techniques,” Luka objected, “but the techniques of surgery. I just have well-trained fingers. If they give me a book and ask me to cut a strictly defined number of pages with a scalpel, I will cut exactly that many and not a single sheet more. He was immediately brought a stack of tissue paper. Bishop Luka felt its density, the sharpness of the scalpel and cut. We counted the leaves - exactly five were cut, as requested ...

The most cruel and distant exile of Bishop Luke is “To the Arctic Ocean!”, as the local leader put it in a fit of anger. Vladyka was escorted by a young policeman, who confessed to him that he felt like Malyuta Skuratov, carrying Metropolitan Philip to the Otroch Monastery. The policeman did not take the exile to the very ocean, but delivered him to the town of Plakhino, 200 kilometers from the Arctic Circle. In a remote village there were three huts, in one of them Vladyka was settled. He recalled: “Instead of the second frames, flat ice floes were frozen outside. The cracks in the windows were not sealed with anything, and in the outer corner in places daylight was visible through a large crack. There was a pile of snow on the floor in the corner. The second pile, which never melted, lay inside the hut at the threshold of the front door.<…>All day and night I stoked the iron stove. When he sat warmly dressed at the table, it was warm above the waist, and cold below.

Once, in this disastrous place, Bishop Luka had to baptize two children in a completely unusual way: “In addition to three huts, there were two human dwellings in the camp, one of which I took for a haystack, and the other for a heap of manure. It was in this latter that I had to baptize. I had nothing: no vestments, no breviary, and in the absence of the latter, I composed prayers myself, and made a kind of stole out of a towel. The squalid human habitation was so low that I could only stand hunched over. A wooden tub served as a font, and all the time the Sacrament was performed, a calf, spinning near the font, interfered with me ...

Surgeon V. F. Voyno-Yasenetsky (left) performs an operation in a zemstvo hospital.
Photo provided by the press service of the Simferopol and Crimean Diocese of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate

Bedbugs, hunger strike and torture

In prisons and exiles, Vladyka Luka did not lose his presence of mind and found the strength for humor. He spoke about his imprisonment in the Yenisei prison, during the first exile: “At night I was attacked by bedbugs, which could not even be imagined. I quickly fell asleep, but soon woke up, turned on the electric lamp and saw that the entire pillow and bed, and the walls of the cell were covered with an almost continuous layer of bedbugs. I lit a candle and set fire to the bedbugs, which began to fall to the floor from the walls and bed. The effect of this ignition was amazing. After an hour of ignition, not a single bug remained in the cell. They, apparently, once said to each other: “Save yourself, brothers! They're on fire here!" In the following days, I didn’t see the bedbugs anymore, they all went to other cells.”

Of course, Bishop Luke was not based on a sense of humor alone. “At the most difficult time,” Vladyka wrote, “I very clearly, almost really felt that next to me was the Lord God Jesus Christ Himself, supporting and strengthening me.”

However, there was a time when he grumbled at God: the difficult northern exile did not end for too long ... And during the third arrest, in July 1937, the bishop almost reached despair from torment. The most severe torture was applied to him - a 13-day "interrogation by a conveyor". During this interrogation, investigators are replaced, while the prisoner is kept day and night practically without sleep and rest. Bishop Luka was beaten with boots, put in a punishment cell, kept in appalling conditions...

Three times he declared a hunger strike, thus trying to protest against the lawlessness of the authorities, against the ridiculous and insulting accusations. Once he even made an attempt to cut his own large artery - not for the purpose of suicide, but to get into the prison hospital and get at least some respite. Exhausted, he fainted right in the corridor, lost his orientation in time and space ...

“Well, no, sorry, I will never forget!”

With the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War, the exiled professor and bishop was appointed chief surgeon of the evacuation hospital in Krasnoyarsk, and then - a consultant to all Krasnoyarsk hospitals. “Wounded officers and soldiers loved me very much,” Vladyka recalls. - When I went around the wards in the morning, the wounded greeted me joyfully. Some of them, unsuccessfully operated on in other hospitals for wounds in large joints, cured by me, invariably saluted me with their straight legs raised high.

After, having received, like a sop, the medal "For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45", the archbishop delivered a response speech, from which the party workers' hair stood on end: "I returned life and health to hundreds, and maybe thousands of wounded and I would certainly have helped many more if you hadn’t grabbed me for no reason at all and dragged me around jails and exiles for eleven years. That's how much time has been lost and how many people have not been saved through no fault of my own." The chairman of the regional executive committee began to say, they say, we must forget the past and live in the present and future, to which Vladyka Luka replied: “Well, no, sorry, I will never forget!”

Nightmare

In 1927, Bishop Luke made a mistake, which he later regretted very much. He asked to be retired and, neglecting his pastoral duties, began to engage almost exclusively in medicine - he dreamed of founding a clinic for purulent surgery. The bishop even began to wear civilian clothes and received the position of consultant at the Andijan hospital in the Ministry of Health ...

Since then, his life has gone wrong. He moved from place to place, operations were unsuccessful, Bishop Luke admitted: he feels that God's grace has left him ...

One day he had an incredible dream: “I dreamed that I was in a small empty church, in which only the altar was brightly lit. In the church, not far from the altar, a reliquary of some reverend stands against the wall, covered with a heavy wooden lid. In the altar, a wide board is placed on the throne, and on it lies a naked human corpse. On the sides and behind the throne, students and doctors stand smoking cigarettes, and I lecture them on anatomy on a corpse. Suddenly I startle from a heavy knock and, turning around, I see that the lid has fallen from the shrine of the monk, he sat down in the coffin and, turning, looks at me with mute reproach ... I woke up with horror ... "

Subsequently, Bishop Luke combined church service with work in hospitals. At the end of his life, he was appointed to the Crimean diocese and did everything so that church life would not die out in the most difficult Khrushchev era.

Bishop in a patched cassock

Even after becoming an archbishop in 1942, Saint Luke ate and dressed very simply, walked around in a patched old cassock, and whenever his niece suggested that he sew a new one, he would say: “Patch, patch, Vera, there are many poor people.” Sofya Sergeevna Beletskaya, the tutor of Vladyka’s children, wrote to his daughter: “Unfortunately, dad is again dressed very poorly: an old canvas cassock and a very old cassock made of cheap material. Both had to be washed for a trip to the Patriarch. Here, all the higher clergy are beautifully dressed: expensive beautiful cassocks and cassocks are beautifully sewn, and dad ... is the worst of all, just a shame ... "

Archbishop Luke was sensitive to other people's troubles all his life. He donated most of his Stalin Prize to children affected by the aftermath of the war; arranged dinners for the poor; Monthly he sent out financial assistance to the persecuted clergy, who were deprived of the opportunity to earn a living. One day he saw a teenage girl with a little boy on the steps of the hospital. It turned out that their father had died, and their mother was hospitalized for a long time. Vladyka took the children to his home, hired a woman who looked after them until their mother recovered.
“The main thing in life is to do good. If you cannot do great good for people, try to do at least a small one, ”said Luka.

"Harmful Luke!"

As a person, Saint Luke was strict and demanding. He often forbade inappropriately behaving priests from serving, deprived some of their dignity, strictly forbade the baptism of children with unbelieving godparents, did not tolerate a formal attitude to service and sycophancy before the authorities. "Harmful Luka!" exclaimed a commissioner once, having learned that he had defrocked yet another priest (for bigamy).

But the archbishop was also able to admit his mistakes... Protodeacon Father Vasily, who served with him in Tambov, told the following story: an elderly parishioner, cashier Ivan Mikhailovich Fomin, was in the church, he read the Clock on the kliros. I read badly, mispronounced words. Archbishop Luke (then head of the Tambov cathedra) had to constantly correct him. One day, after the service, when Vladyka Luka for the fifth or sixth time was explaining to the stubborn reader how certain Church Slavonic expressions were pronounced, a nuisance occurred: emotionally waving the liturgical book, Voino-Yasenetsky touched Fomin, and he announced that the bishop had hit him, and defiantly stopped attending the church... After a short time, the head of the Tambov diocese, wearing a cross and a panagia (a sign of episcopal dignity), went through the whole city to the old man to ask for forgiveness. But the offended reader... did not receive the archbishop! After a while, Vladyka Luke came again. But Fomin did not accept him for the second time! He "forgave" Luka only a few days before the archbishop's departure from Tambov.

The funeral of Archbishop Luke, Simferopol, 1961.
Photo provided by the archive of the Publishing Council of the Russian Orthodox Church

Courage
In 1956, Archbishop Luke became completely blind. He continued to receive the sick, praying for their recovery, and his prayers worked wonders.

The saint died in Simferopol early in the morning of June 11, 1961, on Sunday, the day of All Saints who shone forth in the Russian land.

The authorities did everything to prevent the funeral from becoming "church propaganda": they prepared a large anti-religious article for publication; they forbade the procession on foot from the cathedral to the cemetery, they themselves drove buses for those who were seeing off the bishop and ordered them to go along the outskirts of the city. But the unexpected happened. None of the parishioners got into the prepared buses. No one paid any attention to the Commissioner for Religious Affairs, breathing malice and threats. When the hearse with the coffin moved straight at the faithful, the regent of the cathedral, Anna, shouted: “People, do not be afraid! He won’t crush us, they won’t go for it - grab overboard!” People surrounded the car in a tight ring, and it could only move at a very low speed, so that it turned out to be a procession on foot. Before turning into the outskirts of the streets, the women lay down on the road, so that the car had to go through the center. The central street was filled with people, traffic stopped, the procession on foot lasted three hours, people sang “Holy God” all the way. To all the threats and persuasions of the functionaries they answered: “We are burying our archbishop” ...

His relics were uncovered on November 22, 1995. In the same year, by the decision of the Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Archbishop Luke was canonized as a locally venerated saint. And in 2000, the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church glorified the clergyman Luke in the host of New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia of the 20th century.

short biography

Valentin Feliksovich Voyno-Yasenetsky was born $27$ April $1877$ in Kerch. The name Luke, by which Voyno-Yasenetsky is also known, he received during his tonsure in honor of the doctor St. Apostle Luke.

Valentin studied at the gymnasium and at the art school in Kyiv. After graduating, Voyno-Yasenetsky went to St. Petersburg to enter the Academy of Arts, but realized that his job was to help sick people. As a result, the young man chose the Faculty of Medicine, which he graduated with honors.

Remark 1

Most, as the young doctor believed, the inhabitants of the "outback" needed his help, so Voyno-Yasenetsky preferred career growth to work as a simple zemstvo doctor. However, at that moment the Russo-Japanese War began, and the young surgeon, as part of the Red Cross detachment, went to the Far East. It was there in $1904 in Chita that Voyno-Yasenetsky began an independent practice, he was entrusted with a whole surgical department.

Some time later, together with his young wife, he moved to the Simbirsk province in the town of Ardatov, where Voyno-Yasenetsky became the chief physician of the local small hospital. He had to work very hard.

In connection with the accumulating fatigue, the surgeon soon left the hospital and moved to the village of Verkhny Lyubazh, Kursk province, where he received patients at home, since the hospital was not completed. Here he had to fight epidemics of serious infections: typhoid fever, smallpox and measles.

In $1907, Valentin Feliksovich was transferred to Fatezh, but did not work there for long, as he refused to interrupt the reception in order to call the chairman of the council. The doctor was fired and called a "revolutionary".

After that, leaving his family with his wife's relatives in Ukraine, Voyno-Yasenetsky went to Moscow and got a job at the clinic of Petr Dyakonov, where his main goal was to prepare a doctoral dissertation on regional anesthesia, which did not bring him money. Therefore, in parallel, in $1909, Valentin Feliksovich got a job in the hospital of the village of Romanovka, Saratov province, as the chief physician, and a little later, the town of Pereslavl-Zalessky near Vladimir.

In $1916, Voino-Yasenetsky defended his dissertation. One of the most difficult periods for Valentin Feliksovich was $1917$. He discovered pulmonary tuberculosis in his wife. Considering that a warm climate can help in healing, he transports with his family to Tashkent and gets a job as the head physician in the city hospital. In October 1919, Voyno-Yasenetsky lost his wife.

Soon the surgeon was appointed teacher of anatomy at the new regional medical school, and six months later he also became an employee of the medical faculty of Turkestan University.

In February 1921, the surgeon Voyno-Yasenetsky became a priest, and a little later, in $1923, he took the monastic vows and was elevated to the rank of bishop, although he did not leave the work of a surgeon, head physician and head of the department.

In Tashkent, Voyno-Yasenetsky was taken to prison. He spent three years in the camp. And in $1926$, when he returned to Tashkent, everything he did was forbidden to him. Voyno-Yasenetsky led services in the church of St. Sergius of Radonezh and received patients free of charge.

However, in May 1930, misfortune again falls on his shoulders. He is arrested and sent into exile for three years for allegedly inciting Professor Mikhailovsky to commit suicide.

Returning to Tashkent again, Voyno-Yasenetsky got a job as head of the new department of purulent surgery at the Institute of Emergency Care. In the spring of $1934, after suffering pappatachi fever, Valentin Feliksovich became blind in one eye. However, this did not prevent him from becoming the head of the surgical department of the Institute for the Improvement of Physicians.

At the end of $1937, Voyno-Yasenetsky was again arrested on charges of deliberately killing patients during operations. He survived a $13$-day interrogation by the assembly line method, spent four years between cells and hospitals, but he endured everything and never renounced the priesthood. He was exiled to Siberia in the village of Bolshaya Murta in March $1940$. At the end of September $1941$, after numerous requests, he was transferred to Krasnoyarsk to treat the wounded.

At first, he was looked at with caution, but the Russian Orthodox Church significantly supported the defense, and the attitude towards it in the government began to change. As a result, Valentin Feliksovich was provided with everything necessary for life. At the beginning of $1944, part of the hospitals from Krasnoyarsk were transferred to Tambov, and Voyno-Yasenetsky also ended up there, becoming the head of the local diocese. In $1946$, Voyno-Yasenetsky was appointed Archbishop of Simferopol and Crimea.

In $1958, Archbishop Luke lost his sight, but refused the operation, as he believed that he must accept the will of God. Nevertheless, he continued his episcopal service until the end of his life.

$11$ June $1961$, Voyno-Yasenetsky died. Many people came to say goodbye to the archbishop.

Contribution to medicine

Remark 2

The great doctor had a life full of trials, but despite this, Voyno-Yasenetsky treated people with amazing humanity, he not only saved lives, but remembered each of his patients for life. The great doctor tried to convey this approach to his students. He noted that the most important thing in the work of a surgeon is not the treatment of the disease, but the patient, and the approach is not to the case, but to a living suffering person.

In $1921$, he presented his own technique for the surgical treatment of liver abscesses. He spent a lot of effort on studying the mechanisms of the development of purulent processes, which resulted in a report in $1922$ at the $I$ Congress of Medical Workers of the Turkestan Republic. Also, Voyno-Yasenetsky made several reports on the methods of surgical treatment of tuberculosis and purulent inflammatory processes of various localizations. The most famous work, which today is the reference book of every surgeon, was "Essays on Purulent Surgery".

While still working in Romanovka, Valentin Feliksovich performed the most complex operations on the gastrointestinal tract, kidneys, brain, eyes and heart, being one of the first in the country. In $1915, his book "Regional Anesthesia" was published, for which he received the Choynacki Prize.

An interesting fact is that after the arrests, the name of the surgeon was erased from official medicine, and even the Essays on Purulent Surgery were destroyed.

In $1944, Valentin Feliksovich completed a book on the treatment of infected gunshot wounds of the joints, where he also described the tactics of managing patients with osteomyelitis. Thanks to him, the wounded not only learned to save, but also to return to them the possibility of independent movement.

In $1946$, Voyno-Yasenetsky received the Stalin Prize for the development of new surgical methods for the treatment of purulent wounds and diseases.

Archbishop Luke (in the world Valentin Feliksovich Voyno-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 theoreticians and practitioners of purulent surgery, for the textbook on which he was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1946 (it was given by Vladyka to orphans). The theoretical and practical discoveries of Voyno-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 Voyno-Yasenetsky was born on April 27, 1877 in Kerch in the family of the 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 was Orthodox. According to the laws of the Russian Empire, children in such families had to be brought up in the Orthodox faith. Mother was engaged in charity, did good deeds. One day she brought a dish of kutya to the temple and after a memorial service she accidentally witnessed the division of her offering, after which she never again crossed the threshold of the church.

According to the memoirs of the saint, he inherited his religiosity from a 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 managed to figure out that Tolstoyism 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 the gymnasium, he faced the choice of a 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 medical faculty of Kyiv University and "from a failed artist became an artist in anatomy and surgery." After the brilliantly passed 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 Russo-Japanese War, where he received extensive practice, doing major operations on the bones, joints and skull. Many wounds were covered with pus on the third or fifth day, and even the concepts of purulent surgery, anesthesia and anesthesiology were absent at the medical faculty.

In 1904, he marries sister of mercy Anna Vasilievna Lanskoy, who was called the "holy sister" for her kindness, meekness and deep faith in God. She took a vow of celibacy, but Valentine managed to woo her and she broke that vow. On the night before the wedding, during a prayer, it seemed to her that Christ on 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 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, biliary tract, kidneys, spine, joints, etc. and made a lot of new in the technique of operations. In 1908, he came to Moscow and became an external student at the surgical clinic of Professor P. I. Dyakonov.

In 1915, Voyno-Yasenetsky's book "Regional Anesthesia" was published in Petrograd, in which Voyno-Yasenetsky summarized the results of research and his richest 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 the degree of Doctor of Medicine. His opponent, the famous surgeon Martynov, said: "when I read your book, I got the impression of a bird singing, which cannot but sing, and 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 personally for Valentin Feliksovich. 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 coffin, he was struck by the words of Psalm 112: "And she instills a barren mother in the house, rejoicing over children." He regarded this as an indication of 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 house as a mother rejoicing over 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 Voyno-Yasenetsky was one of the initiators of the organization of Tashkent University and since 1920 he was elected professor of topographic anatomy and operative surgery of this university. Surgical art, and with it the fame of prof. Voyno-Yasenetsky all increased.

He himself found more and more consolation in faith. He attended the local Orthodox religious society, studied theology. Somehow, “unexpectedly for everyone, before starting the operation, Voyno-Yasenetsky crossed himself, crossed the assistant, the operating sister and the patient. Once, after the sign of the cross, the patient - a Tatar by nationality - said to the surgeon: “I am a Muslim. Why are you baptizing me?” The answer followed: “Though the religions are different, but God is one. Under God all are one.

Once he spoke at a diocesan congress "on one very important issue with a great heated speech." After the congress, Bishop Innokenty (Pustynsky) of Tashkent told him: "Doctor, you need to be a priest." “I had no thoughts about the priesthood,” Vladyka Luke recalled, “but I accepted the words of His Grace Innocent as God’s call through the lips of a bishop, and without thinking for a minute: “Very well, 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 was appointed junior priest of the Tashkent Cathedral, while remaining a professor at the university. In holy dignity, he does not stop operating and lecturing.

The wave of renovationism of 1923 reaches Tashkent as well. And while the Renovationists were waiting for the arrival of “their” bishop in Tashkent, a local bishop suddenly showed up in the city, a loyal supporter of Patriarch Tikhon.

They became in 1923 St. Luke Voyno-Yasenetsky. In May 1923 he took monastic vows in his own bedroom with a name in honor of St. the 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 ordained bishop of Tashkent and Turkestan.

Ten 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 connection 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, Vladyka wrote: “Bishop Luke. Professor Voyno-Yasenetsky. Essays on purulent surgery.

Thus, the mysterious prediction of God about this book, which he received in Pereslavl-Zalessky several years ago, was fulfilled. He then heard: "When this book is written, it will have the bishop's name on it."

"Perhaps there is no other such book, - wrote the candidate of medical sciences V.A. Polyakov, - which would be written with such literary skill, with such knowledge of the surgical business, with such love for the suffering person."

Despite the creation of a great, fundamental work, the lord was imprisoned in the Taganskaya prison in Moscow. From Moscow, St. Luka was sent to Siberia. Then, for the first time, Bishop Luke had a strong heart attack.

Exiled to the Yenisei, the 47-year-old bishop again travels by train along the road along which he traveled to Transbaikalia in 1904 as a very young surgeon ...

Tyumen, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk ... Then, in the fierce 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 in eight houses, to Turukhansk ... Otherwise, how could it be called a deliberate murder it is impossible, and he later explained his salvation on the way for 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 doctor-bishop caused a sensation. The admiration for him reached a climax when he performed an extraction of congenital cataracts on three blind little boy brothers and made them sighted.

The children of Bishop Luke paid in full for their father's "clergy". 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, “poisoned” at work and in the service, the stigma of political unreliability will haunt them for many years ... His sons followed in the footsteps of their father, choosing medicine, but none of the four shared his passionate faith in Christ.

In 1930, a second arrest followed, 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 clergymen. For the first time, Vladyka learned what torture was, interrogation by a conveyor belt, when investigators replaced each other for days, kicked, and screamed in a brutal way.

Hallucinations began: yellow chickens ran across the floor, below, in a huge cavity, a city was seen, brightly flooded with the light of lanterns, snakes crawled along the back. But the sorrows experienced by Bishop Luke did not at all suppress him, but, on the contrary, confirmed and tempered his soul. Vladyka twice a day knelt down, turned to the east, and prayed, not noticing anything around him. In the cell, filled to overflowing with exhausted, embittered people, it suddenly became quiet. He was again exiled to Siberia, one hundred and tenth kilometer from Krasnoyarsk.

The outbreak of World War II found the 64-year-old Bishop Luka Voyno-Yasenetsky in his third exile. He sends a telegram to Kalinin, in which he writes: “Being a specialist in purulent surgery, I can help soldiers in the front or rear, where I will be entrusted ... At the end of the war, I am ready to return to exile. Bishop Luke.

He is appointed as a consultant to all hospitals in the Krasnoyarsk Territory - for thousands of kilometers there was no specialist more necessary and more qualified. The selfless work of Archbishop Luke was awarded the medal "For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945", the Stalin Prize of the First Degree for the scientific development of new surgical methods for the treatment of purulent diseases and wounds.

The glory of Archbishop Luke became worldwide. His photographs in hierarchical vestments were transmitted through TASS channels abroad. All this pleased Vladyka only from one point of view. He considered his scientific activity, the 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. Student youth went to meet him at the station with flowers.

Before that, he served for some time in Tambov. A story happened to him there. One widow stood near the church when Vladyka went to the service. “Why are you, sister, standing so sad?” the lord asked. And she told him: “I have five small children, and the house has completely collapsed.” After the service, he took the widow to his home and gave money to build a house.

At about the same time, he was finally forbidden to speak at medical congresses in hierarchal vestments. And his speeches stopped. He understood more and more clearly that it was becoming more and more difficult to combine the hierarchical and medical ministry. His medical practice began to decline.

In the Crimea, Vladyka faced a severe struggle with the authorities, who closed churches one after another in the 1950s. At the same time, his blindness developed. Whoever did not know about this could not have imagined that an archpastor celebrating 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. Vladyka recited all the secret prayers by heart.

He lived, as always, in poverty. Every time Vera's niece offered to sew a new cassock, she heard in response: "Patch, patch, Vera, there are a lot of poor people."

At the same time, the secretary of the diocese kept long lists of those in need. At the end of each month, thirty or forty postal orders were sent to these lists. Dinner in the Bishop's kitchen was prepared for fifteen or twenty people. Many hungry children came, lonely old women, the poor, deprived of their livelihood.

The Crimeans loved their lord very much. Somehow, at the beginning of 1951, Archbishop Luke returned by plane from Moscow to Simferopol. As a result of some misunderstanding at the airport, no one met him. The half-blind Vladyka stood bewildered in front of the airport building, not knowing how to get home. The townspeople recognized him and helped him get on the bus. But when Archbishop Luka was about to get off at his stop, at the request of the passengers, the driver turned off the route and, after driving three extra blocks, stopped the bus at the very porch of the house on Hospitalnaya Street. Vladyka got off the bus to the applause of those who hardly went to church very often.

The blinded archpastor also continued to govern the Simferopol diocese for three years and occasionally receive patients, astounding local doctors with unmistakable diagnoses. He left practical medical activity in 1946, but continued to help patients with advice. He ruled the diocese to the very end with the help of proxies. In the last years of his life, he only listened to what was read to him and dictated his works and letters.

Vladyka 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 ban of the authorities, the whole city saw him off. The streets were packed, absolutely all traffic stopped. The way to the cemetery was strewn with roses.

Troparion, tone 1
To the herald of the path of salvation, the confessor and archpastor of the Crimean lands, the true guardian of fatherly traditions, the unshakable pillar, mentor of Orthodoxy, the God-wise doctor, St.

Kontakion, tone 1
Like an all-light star, shining with virtues, you were a saint, you created an equal-angel soul, for this sake of holiness he is honored by dignity, in exile he suffered a lot from the godless and remained unshakable by faith, healed many with medical wisdom. The same now, glorify your honest body from the bowels of the earth, wonderfully found, the Lord, and let all the faithful cry out to you: Rejoice, Father, St. Luko, praise and affirmation of the Crimean land.

I first heard this unusual surname in the 70s at the institute. I remember (and I even wrote them down) the words of an associate professor who gave a lecture: “If any of you follow the difficult path of a surgeon, and you manage to find the brilliant and very rare book Essays on Purulent Surgery by Professor Voyno-Yasenetsky, you will be one of the happiest surgeons in the world: it seems to me that no one has been able to surpass the talent of this doctor, who was at the same time a bishop. It was a talent from God. In time, this event coincided with our study of the course of "scientific" atheism. I don’t know about the majority, but I listened to the lectures with interest: for some they were a hammer forging the atheists, but at the same time for me it was the only, perhaps, official source where one could gather crumbs of knowledge about religion (V.F. Voyno-Yasenetsky. 1910. about the history of the Church, about God.)

It turned out to be possible to find the Essays, but I rushed in search of information about a person who so strangely combined in himself what is incompatible for us: the profession of a doctor (materialist!) And the priesthood (nothing but an obscurantist in the "light" of atheistic wisdom). My acquaintances, to whom I turned with a question, thoughtfully repeated “Voino-Yasenetsky? .. Bishop? .. no, they didn’t hear ...” A relative who worked in the library system could not help, and I, I remember, even a little offended at her, not trusting and not understanding - "how is it so - no? ..". Only in 1989 did I meet the first for myself in the secular periodical "Memories of Professor V. F. Voyno-Yasenetsky" by Academician of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences I. Kassirsky. In his memoirs about the doctor-archbishop, he wonders how it is that “religiousness never drowned out in him the great voice of the conscience of a doctor, scientist and humanist”?

He calls the invariable custom of V. F. Voyno-Yasenetsky before the operation to make a short prayer, cross the patient and be sure to draw a cross with iodine on the patient’s body as eccentricity. Believers, and even those with education, were “buii” for the world - abnormal, insane, dark ... Following the logic of disbelief, one wonders: how “abnormal” was this person who combined the healer of souls and bodies, not just an educated believer , but a talented scientist-surgeon of world renown and an archpastor? Archbishop Luka was called Saint Panteleimon of our time by Orthodox priests abroad, and this comparison was prophetic: on June 11 (N.S.), 1996, he was glorified as a saint who shone in the Russian Land. How could he combine the "incompatible"? He himself answered this question with the words from Psalm 50: “Behold, thou hast loved the truth; Thy unknown and secret wisdom revealed to me." The ancient family of the Voyno-Yasenetskys has been known since the 16th century, but by the time the future Saint Luke was born in 1877, their family was not rich. However, his father, who owned a pharmacy store, was able to give his children a good education. The relocation of the Voyno-Yasenetskys from Kerch to Kyiv, or rather, the proximity of the shrines of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, influenced the formation of the faith of the young man Valentine. This was also facilitated by the deep religiosity of the parents, love for the mother's charity, but most of all - the special piety of the Catholic father, Felix Stanislavovich.

After receiving a matriculation certificate, Valentine, with unprecedented zeal and seriousness, read the New Testament presented to him by the director of the gymnasium, which made an impression on the young man that determined his attitude to Orthodoxy for the rest of his life. He chose the difficult life path of a confessor of the Orthodox faith. He did not immediately decide on his studies. Since childhood, having the talent of an artist, Valentin, who graduated from an art school with the gymnasium, is trying to enter the Academy of Arts, but his love for the humanities leads him to the Faculty of Law. The desire to be useful to the common people and the wise advice of the director of public schools finally determined his fate: Valentin Voyno-Yasenetsky in 1898 became a student at the medical faculty of Kyiv University. St. Prince Vladimir. Talents don't go to waste.

Granted by God and his parents, he not only saved, but also increased: “The ability to draw very subtly and my love for form turned into a love for anatomy ... From a failed artist, I became an artist in anatomy and surgery.” Good prospects open up before the young doctor, but the desire to help and love for poor people lead him to the Red Cross medical detachment. Here, during the Russo-Japanese War, a university graduate immediately becomes the head of the surgical department, and this is an opportunity to distribute duties himself, and Voyno-Yasenetsky takes on the most difficult, he immediately begins to operate, and operations, as his colleagues noticed, took place impeccable.

Not only in the war, but also in the hospitals of many small towns, where a talented surgeon later worked, he did not try to become, as they say now, a narrow specialist. He applied his talents in all areas of medicine, operating on almost all organs with the same brilliance: operations on the joints, bones, spine and brain, kidneys, bile ducts, eye and gynecological ... Now this is impossible to imagine! The poverty of zemstvo hospitals forced them to face the problem of anesthesia, and the latter was the impetus for scientific activity - the development of a new method of anesthesia - regional anesthesia, which was crowned with the degree of Doctor of Medicine. But Valentin Feliksovich had a special love for purulent surgery - in those difficult times, purulent complications of injuries and inflammatory diseases were the rule. How often ordinary working people suffered from them, for the sake of which the future professor left a possible scientific career at the beginning of his journey. As you often see students, and even some doctors, disgustedly turning away from a purulent, stinking wound, it is so difficult to imagine this special love for the “dirty work” of a refined intellectual. Maybe I'm exaggerating, not so often? .. But no one except him wrote the Essays on Purulent Surgery, which became not only a classic of modern medicine, but also an outstanding work of art. No one else is ready to confess his sins and mistakes so publicly, blaming myself in unprofessionalism, and in front of an audience of 60,000 people (such was the circulation of the book) to confess: yes, I am the cause of this or that death. And this is an edification to others ... "Perhaps, there is no other such book that would with such literary skill, with such knowledge of the surgical field, with such love for a suffering person” - this is the assessment of the work of a scientist-surgeon by one of the colleagues of the Central Institute of Traumatology and Orthopedics.

Work on the book continued for many years of difficult trials for Voyno-Yasenetsky: during wars, epidemics, interrogations and exiles. Vladyka Luka had already undergone many temptations, unacceptably, as it sometimes seemed to him, combining work in the morgue and in the purulent surgical department with archpastoral service. But the Lord revealed to him, and Vladyka writes in his memoirs: "... my Essays on Purulent Surgery were pleasing to God, for they greatly increased the strength and significance of my confession in the midst of anti-religious propaganda", "The Holy Synod... equated my treatment wounded to the valiant hierarchal service, and elevated me to the rank of archbishop. Even the God-fighting authorities could not fail to appreciate the great talent: Vladyka, rescued from the third exile, was offered a job in a large evacuation hospital, and after the war in 1946 he received the Stalin Prize of the 1st degree for his "Essays". After reading what was written above, one might think: we are talking about some kind of idealized inaccessible image, even the mention of the difficult years of life is drowned in delight and praise. And in many ways he was like everyone else: he lived with care for his family, worked in sweat, was sad and rejoiced, got tired, endured insults and steadfastly, like many of our compatriots, endured the mockery and outright mockery of the most precious - faith, the Tsar and the fatherland. A terrible thing happened - reared up, wounded by the revolution, Russia groaned; in Tashkent, where by that time Valentin Feliksovich had received the position of surgeon and chief physician of a large city hospital, they shot. Having miraculously escaped the death sentence of the "troika", he endured any difficulties calmly and steadfastly. Working in a transcendental mode, not for profit, in the name of love for one's neighbor, and unquenchable prayer, and therefore God's help, did not allow to become embittered, to break down.

The death of his wife briefly unsettled. Left with four children, he asks God for help, and He sends a kind helper, who has become a second mother for children, a childless widow, operating sister Sophia Sergeevna. A lot of speculation and suspicion hovered around the family, but in his thoughts and attitude towards Sophia Sergeevna, VF Voyno-Yasenetsky was pure. He works day and night, writes, prays. He becomes the organizer of the Turkestan University, where he holds the position of professor at the medical faculty, head of the department of topographic anatomy. Moreover, he participates in meetings of church brotherhood, does not miss Sunday and holiday services, speaks at disputes, defending the purity of Orthodoxy from the heresy of the living church, with which the godless authorities tried to replace the faith of the fathers. At the end of one of the disputes, Vladyka Innokenty, who was present at the meeting, said to Valentin Feliksovich: "Doctor, you need to be a priest." Soon this happened, causing a sensation in Tashkent, a storm of various feelings among the students and professors, indignation and anger of the authorities. He is not afraid to suffer for his faith, he suffers attacks from atheists, misunderstanding on the part of godless colleagues and students, insults and threats from representatives of the new government. On the stage of the theaters of the country, a play, monstrous in its deceitful essence, is being played, where one of the characters can be recognized as Voyno-Yasenetsky, as an enemy of the Soviet government, as a brake on the development of advanced proletarian scientific thought. Two well-known Soviet writers fight and sue each other, challenging the priority of authorship. Sneaky denunciation priority! But, combining the work of a doctor, scientist and pastor, he lectures on anatomy in a cassock with a cross, he does not start the operation without praying before the icon, which is always in front of him in the operating room. And only the highest talent of the surgeon, professionalism, honesty, exactingness to himself and his subordinates, for a long time protects him from repression.

"The work should look like a diamond, wherever you turn it, it sparkles." This is how the outstanding surgeon-scientist shone in his work, this is how the faith of the Orthodox pastor shone. He could not go unnoticed, he should be continued, his path should have been difficult and long, and end only when he fulfills the mission measured to him on earth to the drop. Even while working in the zemstvo hospital of Pereslavl, when the young doctor decided to write a book on purulent surgery, he was surprised to notice the appearance of an obsessive thought in himself: "When the book is written, the name Bishop will be on it." This happened, but only the publishers omitted the word "bishop".

During the schism, when the clergy who supported the Living Church rebelled against Patriarch Tikhon, Father Valentin Voyno-Yasenetsky became Bishop Luka. Soon - the first arrest, searches, cellars of the GPU, exile. About twelve years in prison and exile: Krasnoyarsk, Arkhangelsk, Bolshaya Murta of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, Yeniseisk, Turukhansk... From hot Tashkent to permafrost. No circumstances can break Archbishop Luka - he does not leave his medical practice for a minute, he is an Archbishop in exile. Humiliations, damp cells, sleepless nights, conveyor interrogations, do not detract from his love for his neighbor: once presented by him to a half-naked sheepskin coat trembling from the cold, he saves during arrests and exiles. Vladyka from the inevitable bullying of criminals at the stages: they politely greet him, calling him "father". Any thief and bandit, as Vladyka was convinced, feels and appreciates a simple human attitude. At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the people and the authorities needed Vladyka's unique surgical talent. He heads the largest hospital, consults, operates and at the same time, saving soldiers, participates in the work of the Holy Synod, carries out the most difficult church service - he manages the Krasnoyarsk department, then, since 1944, the Tambov department. The name of the surgeon-archpastor becomes known all over the world. Dozens of titles of scientific works and books, 11 volumes of spiritual works, sermons were left behind by Vladyka Luka, elected in 1954 an honorary member of the Moscow Theological Academy.

"Essays on Purulent Surgery" (first edition in 1936) have become classics, and the theological work "Spirit, Soul, Body", which has only recently been published in Russia, where an anatomist and surgeon, who has performed an innumerable number of operations and autopsies, writes about the heart as a receptacle immaterial soul as an organ of God-knowledge! The last fifteen years of Archbishop Luke's life (from 1946 to 1961) were spent in Simferopol, where, occupying the hierarchal chair, he did not leave the scientific and practical activities of a doctor until the moment when an illness suffered in the 1920s led him to complete blindness. There, in the hungry post-war years, the bishop’s kitchen always prepared, albeit simple, dinner for several people: “Many hungry children, lonely old women, poor people who were deprived of their livelihood came to dinner. Every day I boiled a large cauldron, and it was raked out to the bottom. In the evening, my uncle asked: “How many were at the table today? Did you feed everyone? Did everyone have enough?" (From the memoirs of V. Prozorovskaya, niece of Archbishop Luke). Vladyka consults patients who come from far away, making a diagnosis, arranging for treatment and surgery... But blindness did not become an obstacle in serving the Church and in helping people. During the celebration of divine services, those in the temple did not suspect that a blind bishop was serving. And God in his weakness gave him new grace-filled strength for the treatment of diseases.

Everyone, evaluating what is happening, has his own experience as the basis of his judgment, the upbringing, education of the soul and mind that are invested in it, the instilled opinion of loved ones and favorite authorities: in literature, in culture, in science, in faith. In disbelief, including. The concept of a miracle, therefore, for some is a coincidence, for some it is just a grandmother's tale, for some it is an undisclosed pattern, for someone it is a product of a sick imagination. One way or another, the extraordinary, unnatural, or rather, the supernatural nature of a miracle - in violation of the laws of the physical world. For a believer in God, a miracle is daily and everywhere: why can’t the Creator of the world and its laws break the usual order for some good purposes? The power to work miracles, or “wonderful deeds”, is given by the Lord to people who are turned to Him, who are morally pure, who have love for their neighbor no less than for themselves. Maria Mitrofanovna Peredriy received help from the archbishop-surgeon both during her lifetime and after her death. Even when Vladyka Luke was alive, Maria Mitrofanovna's lip began to fester and hurt. No matter where she went, no doctor could help her. Then she turned to Vladyka, and he cured her. In 1989, her husband Grigory fell ill. She went to the grave of the saint and tearfully asked him for the recovery of her husband. She came home and was surprised that her husband got out of bed, began to walk around the room and subsequently felt good. Larisa Yatskova testifies that from the summer of 1993 until the spring of 1994, her left eye was very sore. The pain spread to the left side of the head. It especially intensified in the evening. Tortured by serious illnesses, she came to the grave of the saint and received healing. These are just some of the miracles of St. Luke, it is difficult to list them all. Saint Luke reposed on June 11, 1961. On May 24-25, 1996, in the Simferopol and Crimean diocese, a celebration of the glorification of St. Luke of Crimea took place. “The Church ranks among the holy ascetics of faith and piety, confessors and martyrs. And today she glorified the new saint, who from now on will be our prayer book and patron ... ”said His Beatitude Vladimir, Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine, after the end of the service. Finishing a brief description of the life path of a person, as many of us now, a believing doctor, we see: he was better than us, and seeing in him holiness inaccessible to us, we can still easily turn to him as an intermediary, intercessor before God, with a request to sanctify our lives, our deeds:
"Prelate Father Luko, pray to God for us."