Luke of Valaam

The Venerable Martyr Luke of Valaam was a novice of the Valaam monastery and died on 20 February 1578 (old style) with thirty-⁠three other brethren, killed by the Swedes for the Orthodox faith. The monastery lay near the border between Novgorod and Sweden and had been plundered several times. In the time of John III of Sweden, a force of new Lutherans, pursuing the Orthodox Karelians, crossed the ice to the island and attacked the monastery, killing eighteen elders and sixteen novices. The page says nothing particular about Luke, only that he is named among the novices.

Their names

The names of the slain were written in the monastery's synodikon with the note "killed by the Germans on Valaam": the monks Titus, Tikhon, Gelasius, Sergius, Varlaam, Savva, Conon, Silvester, Cyprian, Pimen, John, Samon, Jonah, David, Cornelius, Nifont, Athanasius, Serapion and a second Varlaam; the novices Athanasius, Anthony, Luke, Leontius, Thomas, Dionysius, Philip, Ignatius, Basil, Pachomius, a second Basil, Theophilus, John, Theodore and a second John. It is said that on Valaam there is no stone not marked with the blood of ascetics.

Veneration

In the nineteenth century a monk near the hermitage of Abbot Nazarius saw a procession of unknown monks, bright and gentle, yet sprinkled with blood and covered with wounds, who sang funeral prayers in the old chant and vanished into the thicket. Abbot Damascene ordained that every year, on 20 February (4 March in the new style), the Liturgy and a solemn memorial service be served for them. They were numbered among the saints of the Russian Church, for general veneration, at the Jubilee Council of Bishops in August 2000.

Luke is commemorated on 5 March, in the new style, on 3 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of Karelia and on the movable day around 22 August in the Synaxis of the Saints of Valaam.