One becomes a doctor through science and… vocation

“From Hippocrates onward, the mysterious relationship between doctor and patient has been founded on its supportive nature, oriented toward protecting the person’s life and attempting to alleviate their suffering. This is the categorical imperative that guided the medical profession for centuries and still determines its appeal today. This orientation toward the good, in any circumstance, makes the doctor a secure point of reference for the sick person and the community, and means that the doctor’s role cannot be reduced to a merely ‘technical’ one: the patient asks for competence and professionalism, but always and at the same time also wants reassurance that whatever is proposed to them is for their own good. This additional task explains an old (but increasingly true) popular saying: that to become a doctor requires a vocation, that is, an additional willingness (beyond technical expertise) to enter into a relationship with the sick person, to share their difficulties at that moment, and in some way to suffer with them.” Thus, in an article published by Avvenire in 2019, the president of the national association Medicina e Persona outlined the characteristics of the doctor, in whom work and mission are intertwined!

Saints Cosmas and Damian: doctors of body and soul

An example of doctors by vocation is Saints Cosmas and Damian, twin brothers who lived in the 3rd century and who treat the sick without charging them. For this reason, they are called anargyroi, a Greek word meaning “without silver.” The episode of the healing of a woman suffering from hemorrhages, named Palladia, is famous. Out of gratitude, she offers the two brothers three eggs. After their firm refusal, she begs Damian to accept the small gift. Damian, so as not to offend the woman, accepts the eggs. But this provokes Cosmas’s anger, and he asks not to be buried together with his brother after death.

The work of these saints is not limited to caring for bodies, but aims at the good of souls: through their example and their words, they manage to convert many pagans. They die as martyrs after bearing witness, through their work, to Christ’s love.

Saint Giuseppe Moscati: doctor and missionary

The president of the national Medicine and Person association also recalls another great holy doctor who made his profession a mission: “Giuseppe Moscati placed this motto in the anatomical theater of the Hospital for the Incurables in Naples: ‘Death, I shall be your death,’ to remind himself and his students of the greatness of the profession and, at the same time, of the need, in fighting human limitations, to always instill in the sick an indispensable hope: that illness and death are not the final word on human life.”

Before he was even 30, Moscati became famous for his immediate and precise diagnoses, which seemed miraculous considering the limited means available at the time. When someone pointed this out to him, he replied that it was thanks to prayer, because God is the author of life, while doctors can only be unworthy collaborators. It was with this awareness that he went to work every day, both at the Hospital for the Incurables (where he became chief physician in 1925) and in his private practice, whose waiting room displayed a sign regulating fees: “Those who can, contribute something; those in need, take what they need”.
Everyone was welcomed there, and not only did the poor pay nothing, but during his frequent home visits Giuseppe provided spiritual comfort in addition to medical care. For him, science and faith were not two distant worlds, but two elements that coexisted in his daily life.

It is therefore entirely fitting to share what Valerio Lessi, author of the book The Saints of the Missal - Giuseppe Moscati (a new release from Shalom), writes in the Introduction: “Moscati’s human story brings into profound unity what we are normally led to consider separate, especially in today’s secularized society: profession and mission. Not only in the sense that he devoted himself to his profession with dedication and sacrifice, as though it were indeed a mission; but in the deeper and more challenging sense for us that, by practicing medicine, he had been a missionary of Christ. Let us be clear: not that he ‘had also been’ a missionary of Christ. No, he had simply been a missionary while practicing the medical profession.”

The pandemic has brought the role and importance of doctors to the fore, made us reflect on their daily mission, and led us to continue praying for them and for their great and delicate responsibility as custodians of life.