Salutations to you! How are you? I hope that you are well. Back in the year of 1933 a woman in the state of Georgia by the name of Eudora Brown Almond decided to honor the dedicated doctors who cared for the health and well-being of their patients. She sent out greeting cards to those doctors who were living and placed flowers on the graves of those who had died. (Thankfully she didn’t get those two gifts mixed up!)
As it turns out the husband of Mrs. Almond was a doctor and so she wanted to express her appreciation for him and his colleagues for saving the lives of so many through medicine. The date of March 30th was originally selected as Doctor’s Day because it was on that same day in 1843 that a particular anesthesia was used during a surgery for the first time. As a public gesture of gratitude for the tremendous work of healthcare professionals the U.S. Congress in 1991 declared that Doctor’s Day on March 30th of each year was to be a National Holiday. In the days leading up to that celebration we are in what has been referred to as National Physicians Week. It’s a time to think about and to thank those amazing men and women who have focused their energies on caring for the health of others.
I would encourage you to take a moment right now to pause from reading this article and say a prayer for all of those doctors who have helped you make it to this point in your life. From the doctor who helped deliver you into this world; to the doctor who may have done any surgeries that you might have had; to the doctor that you might be seeing on a regular basis; to the doctor that you might not even know, offer up a prayer for their own health and well-being and journey of conversion. If there are any doctors who are reading this article at this very moment, thank you so very much for living the vocation that God has called you to live!
As Catholic Christians we believe that the healer of all wounds and illnesses, be they physical, spiritual, or psychological is our loving and merciful Lord who has sent us our Savior Jesus Christ. To Him we pray for all doctors in these days with these or similar words:
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O merciful Father, who have wonderfully fashioned man in your own image, and have made his body to be a temple of the Holy Spirit, sanctify, we pray you, our doctors and all those whom you have called to study and practice the arts of healing the sick and the prevention of disease and pain. Strengthen them in body and soul, and bless their work, that they may give comfort to those for whose salvation your Son became Man, lived on this earth, healed the sick, and suffered and died on the Cross. Amen
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