- October 4, 2012
- 9:20 am
- Akanksha Jayanthi
Stritch honors St. Luke
In 1598 at the medical school of Padua University in Venice, Italy, students and faculty gathered on October 18 to celebrate the beginning of a new academic year with the feast of St. Luke, the patron saint of physicians. Ever since 1947 when a group of Loyola medical students decided to revive that tradition, Loyola’s Stritch School of Medicine (SSOM) has carried on the celebration.
Linda Massari, director of medical education administration at SSOM, says that St. Luke embodies the vision of Loyola medical students.
“His life was focused on stewardship, service, ethics, and human dignity. St. Luke’s gospel is of the poor and social justice, therefore it fits really nicely with our mission and vocation,” Massari says.
Sister Brenda Eagan, IBVM, director of ministry at SSOM, says that the St. Luke celebration is a reflection on medicine as a being more than just an area of employment.
“Medicine is a vocation. It’s not just a professional field. It’s not a career you go into. It’s a calling,” Eagan says.
Sister Brenda also mentions that these celebrations honor the Jesuit ideal of being inclusive of all faiths.
“Under those Jesuit Catholic ideals of finding God in all things, the care for each person, and having a home for all faiths,…you can be developed into the faithful person that your particular religious affiliation brings to the campus in the sense that your calling comes from who you are. All of that is in the service of humankind. We are doing it because we are called to serve people who have less than we have,” says Sister Brenda.
This year’s St. Luke Celebration includes an address by Linda Brubaker, MD, MS, chief diversity officer and dean of SSOM, on “the ideal Stritch graduate” on Wednesday, October 17, at 11:30 a.m. in the SSOM atrium.
Also speaking on Wednesday (following Dr. Brubaker) are two Stritch graduates: Khalilah Gates, MD (SSOM ’03), and Justin List, MD (SSOM ’10). Massari says that these two individuals “are folks who have gone on to lead what really can be defined by saying an “extraordinary life.” They have taken their Stritch education and their commitment to service, and that’s what they “do” now.
The Mass in honor of St. Luke will be held on Thursday, October 18 in the atrium at SSOM at 11:30 a.m. Lunch will follow.
The following Friday, October 26, students and faculty can attend a dinner-dance at The Carlisle in Lombard, Illinois. Tickets for this event will be available after October 8 in the SSOM’s Bursar’s Office.
For additional information about the St. Luke Celebration, please call the Office of Student Affairs at 708.216.3220.
