Before he is even 30, he is already famous for his rapid and precise diagnoses, which seem miraculous considering the limited means available at the time. He says this is thanks to prayer, because God is the creator of life, while doctors can only be unworthy collaborators. Giuseppe Moscati, the saintly doctor, treated the body and the spirit at the same time: to a patient who later recovered, he diagnosed that his physical suffering was caused solely by his estrangement from God. For this reason, he prescribed the Eucharist as treatment. The original prescription of the sacraments often appeared on prescriptions alongside medications. But let us start at the beginning.
The medical profession lived as a mission
For Giuseppe Moscati, the decision to enroll in medical school coincided with the vocation to which God was calling him. A vocation that matured in Giuseppe’s heart without his parents’ knowledge, although his father had made him sensitive to the human suffering that needed to be alleviated, as the Saint testified in one of his writings, and his brother Alberto’s illness had brought him into contact with suffering. Giuseppe’s father was a magistrate, and there was no tradition of doctors in the Moscati family.
When Giuseppe expressed his intention to study medicine, his father, who was liberal-minded and respectful of his children’s decisions, accepted it. His mother, however, pointed out to her son the suffering and hardships he would face. Giuseppe then expressed, in this simple sentence, that for him being a doctor was a mission, not a profession from which to gain money and prestige: «But what are you saying, Mother? I am ready to lie down in the very bed of the sick person.»
Always by the side of the sick
Giuseppe Moscati never treated the sick person as a number, but always as what he was and is: a brother to be helped with the precision of science and the sensitivity of faith. He was passionate about his profession. His life was always spent alongside the sick, both those hospitalized at the Incurables Hospital (where he became chief physician in 1925) and those he visited in his private practice, whose waiting room displayed a sign regulating fees: “Those who can, should contribute something; those in need, should take something”. Before the illness and the patient’s body, he was conscious of standing before a person with all the human and transcendent values that person carries within. It is said that once, after curing a laborer of a lung abscess, Giuseppe refused the money the man wanted to give him and asked him to go to confession as his fee: “Because it is God who saved you”.
Doing everything out of love
In a letter to Dr. Guericchio dated July 22, 1922, he wrote: “It is not science, but charity that has transformed the world…”. And in a letter to Mrs. Emma Picchillo, he stated: “Let us practice charity every day. God is charity: whoever remains in charity remains in God, and God remains in him. Let us not forget to offer our actions to God every day, indeed every moment, doing everything out of love for him.”
For Saint Giuseppe Moscati, science and faith are not incompatible; rather, they are two elements that coexist in his daily life, marked by daily Eucharist, great devotion and love for the Virgin Mary, personal simplicity and poverty, and the choice of celibacy to have more time for his ever-increasing number of patients, whom he assisted until the very end. Conclusion: Moscati’s life teaches us what true dedication to others means—to those whom the Lord places beside us in our professional, family, and social lives. A true example to follow, a great saint to invoke. Do you have any memories to share with us related to this saint? Write them in the comments.
