March 18 commemorates the acquisition of the holy relics of St Luke (Voyno-Yasenetsky), known for the miraculous healings coming from them. Through the prayers of St Luke to the Lord, “the natural order” of things is overcome by His grace. The healings coming from St Luke’s relics are not only bodily. The saint cares for the souls of the afflicted and brings them to the holy church.
Nazar’s Fingers Grew Back Again after a Door Shut on Them
It happened in the early 2000s, when Nazar was 10 years old. Following the family tradition, he was visiting his grandmother in Feodosia (Crimea). The boy loved music and was planning to devote his whole life to it, so he enjoyed spending time with his musical instrument even while on vacation. It was a hot day, and the house windows and doors were wide open. After another musical lesson, Nazar decided to take a walk in the street. The boy was leaving the house when in some incredible way, possibly due to a sharp gust of wind, the heavy door slammed shut right on his fingers. Seeing the boy’s bleeding hand, his parents called an ambulance. At the hospital, it turned out that the 3rd and 4th phalangeal bones were crushed and could not be rescued. An urgent amputation was necessary. That sounded as a sentence for the boy, as it meant that he could no longer play the music that he loved so much.
Nazar Stadnichenko
A few days after the operation, the boy’s grandmother invited her suffering grandson to go to the imperishable relics of St Luke of Crimea in Simferopol, and ask him with faith for healing. Together with his parents, Nazar went to these holy relics, where the boy prayed with the sincerity of a child, “Saint Luke, I don’t know how you are going to do it, but I need my fingers to play the piano.”
Reliquary with the relics of St Luke in Simferopol
Notably, the boy’s life was subtly connected with the saint from his very birth. Nazar was born in Cherkasy, where the saint’s parents lived with his elder brother’s family. Besides, the boy was baptized in Feodosia by Archpriest Anatoly Chepel, ordained to the priesthood by St Luke himself. Whether it was for this reason that the saint heard the boy’s prayers so quickly or due to the ardent prayer of his young heart, incredible things soon began to happen.
In memory of his visit to the grave, Nazar took with him from Simferopol a laminated icon of the saint and some blessed oil from his relics. The boy also asked to bandage the icon to his sore arm and to anoint the places of the amputated fingers with holy oil every day. Several weeks later, the postsurgical pain began to subside, yielding to some strange sensations appearing in the amputation area. Then Nazar’s family decided to see the doctor again. The examination showed some tubercles appearing in place of the missing phalanges. They were continually lengthening until they acquired the size of normal fingers. After a short while the fingernails also began to grow back.
When the surgeon performing the operation in Feodosia found out about what had happened, he could not believe it. He had never heard of anything like that before. Seeing the X-rays showing that the removed joints and bones had indeed regenerated, the doctor testified to that being a real miracle.
In this way, thanks to the miraculous help of St Luke, Nazar was able to continue doing what he believed to be his life’s work. Less than a year after the operation, he was already able to participate in a piano competition, where he took second prize.
Ivan’s Healing of Tuberculosis
Ivan was a student when he started to have bad coughs for long periods of time. When he first came for examination, he was diagnosed with pneumonia and prescribed 10 shots of antibiotics. The disease then went into remission which lasted for six months before the “pneumonia” came back. As a result of the next examination, it turned out that the young man had tuberculosis. He underwent surgery, during which, as it was soon found out, he contracted an infection called Pseudomonas aeruginosa. For several months, the doctors tried to cure Ivan of this infection so that a second operation could be performed without the risk of spreading it through equipment to other hospital patients. However, none of the treatments were successful. There had previously been several similar cases in that hospital, but ultimately none of these patients survived.
At that time Ivan, although a believer, was going through a period of indifference towards the church, fasting and prayer. One of the hospital nurses, named Elena was also a believer. She invited Ivan to go to confession and receive communion. The young man agreed and eventually started to come to the temple quite often. Elena also advised him to visit the nearby church with an icon of St Luke, who had dedicated his whole life to helping people suffering from this disease, including his own wife.
Ivan visited the icon and attended a prayer service to St Luke, where he took some oil from the holy icon. Not expecting any more help from anyone and trusting the saint, the young man began to pray to him daily, reading akathist hymns. At some point, the thought came to him that the oil from the icon should somehow be introduced into his lung. Together with the nurse he started secretly adding a little oil to the injected medicine. A few days later, the examination showed that the infection was no longer there. The doctors did not believe these results and performed several more studies. When the results were confirmed, Ivan was able to have an operation again. Thanks to the holy oil and the prayers of St Luke, all complications after it were also safely cured. As a result, after 18 months in the hospital, Ivan was discharged as “completely cured”.