Feast Day of St. Luke: Sirach on Physicians

Our daughter Susan goes to an Anglican church in Toronto. Today was the feast day of St. Luke, and she passed on this reading to us. It is from the book of Sirach, a book that was part of the Septuagint, the Bible that was used by the early Christians. Ben Sirah, a Jewish scribe who had been living in Jerusalem, may have authored the work in Alexandria, Egypt circa 180-175 BC. Catholics, Anglicans and Eastern Orthodox still read Sirach, considering it a "deuterocanonical" work.

Here is the reading:

Honor physicians for their services, for the Lord created them;
for their gift of healing comes from the Most High,
and they are rewarded by the king.
The skill of physicians makes them distinguished,
and in the presence of the great they are admired.
The Lord created medicines out of the earth,
and the sensible will not despise them.
Was not water made sweet with a tree in order that its power might be known?
And he gave skill to human beings that he might be glorified in his marvelous works.
By them the physician heals and takes away pain;
the pharmacist makes a mixture from them. God's works will never be finished;
and from him health spreads over all the earth.

My child, when you are ill, do not delay, but pray to the Lord, and he will heal you.
Give up your faults and direct your hands rightly, and cleanse your heart from all sin.
Offer a sweet-smelling sacrifice, and a memorial portion of choice flour, and pour oil on your offering, as much as you can afford.
Then give the physician his place, for the Lord created him;
do not let him leave you, for you need him.
There may come a time when recovery lies in the hands of physicians,
for they too pray to the Lord that he grant them success in diagnosis and in healing, for the sake of preserving life.
He who sins against his Maker,

will be defiant toward the physician.

(Sirach 38:1-15).