St. Raphael the Archangel
He walks the whole way there and back with a frightened young man without saying who he is, gets him safely married, drives off what was destroying the marriage, and cures his father's blindness.
Canonized
THESE FIELDS ARE NOT UNKNOWN. THEY DO NOT APPLY. Raphael is an angel, not a human being: he was not born, he did not die, he was not converted, and he had nothing to overcome. born, died, age_at_death_exact, convert and struggles are all null in this record — not because the sources are silent, and not because nobody has looked, but because there is nothing of that kind to find. DO NOT FILL THEM IN. Any date a later reader finds attached to him will belong to a feast, and belongs in the summary or the source notes, never in these fields. Same treatment as Michael and Gabriel.
Raphael is an archangel, and his name means "God has healed". Almost everything known about him comes from one book of the Bible, the Book of Tobit. His name does not appear in the Hebrew Scriptures, and in the Greek Old Testament it appears only there; he is never named in the New Testament.
In Tobit he turns up in human form as a traveling companion for a young man making a long and dangerous journey, and gives a false name — he calls himself "Azarias the son of the great Ananias". He stays with him the whole way. He gets him married to a woman whose seven previous husbands had died, and drives off the thing that had been killing them. On the way home he cures the young man's father of blindness. Only then does he say who he is: "the angel Raphael, one of the seven, who stand before the Lord".
What he tells them before he goes is that he had been carrying their prayers to God the whole time, while they were busy burying the dead and looking after people.
Benedict XVI drew out the two healings in that story and said they were the same work the Church does: Raphael "heals the disturbed communion between a man and a woman. He heals their love," and then he heals blindness — which the pope took as a figure for people who cannot see God any more.
He keeps 29 September with Michael and Gabriel, and the three are celebrated together.
State of life
archangel
Themes
healing · travel · friendship · trust
St. Raphael the Archangel (Catholic Encyclopedia)
- WHERE HE IS IN THE BIBLE, AND WHY THAT NEEDS SAYING PLAINLY. The summary uses the Catholic Encyclopedia's own formulation, close to its words: his name 'does not appear in the Hebrew Scriptures, and in the Septuagint only in the Book of Tobias'. THE REASON THAT SENTENCE IS IN A RECORD FOR A FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD IS THIS. The Book of Tobit is in the Catholic canon of Scripture and in the Greek Old Testament, but it is not in the Hebrew Bible, and Bibles that follow the Hebrew canon do not contain it. A reader who looks Raphael up in such a Bible will not find him, and may be told he is not in Scripture at all. That is a real difference between canons and not a mistake by anyone. Michael and Gabriel need no such note: both are named in books that every Christian tradition receives, and Raphael is not — the encyclopedia points out that of the three, 'only Gabriel and Michael are mentioned by name' in the New Testament. The record states the fact and does not argue about it.
- FIVE FIELDS ARE INAPPLICABLE RATHER THAN UNSOURCED — see date_note, and the michael-the-archangel record where this was worked out. born, died, age_at_death_exact, convert and struggles are null because Raphael is not a creature with a life. An unsourced field invites someone to go and find the source; an inapplicable one has nothing to find.
- THE HOLINESS LINE STATES AN OFFICE RATHER THAN A DEED, UNDER THE CARVE-OUT IN THAT FIELD'S DOCSTRING — though it is the least strained of the three angel records, because Tobit actually narrates him doing things. The carve-out's trigger is that the subject has NO BIOGRAPHY AT ALL. It is not available to a human record with thin sources.
- THREE FIELDS WHERE THE SCHEMA HAS NO RIGHT ANSWER FOR AN ANGEL, HANDLED AS FOR MICHAEL AND GABRIEL. status: canonized with status_basis pre_congregation and a null year, the enum having no value for an angel. era: 'early' records when he is first attested, not when he lived. region: phrased as where the Book of Tobit places him, so it cannot be read as a birthplace.
- Catholic Encyclopedia (Herbermann, 1907-1913), 'St. Raphael' by J. F. Driscoll — source of 'God has healed', the canon sentence quoted above, the disguise as 'Azarias the son of the great Ananias', the binding of the demon 'in the desert of upper Egypt', the seven husbands of Sara, the self-revelation as 'the angel Raphael, one of the seven, who stand before the Lord' (Tobit 12:15), and his own account of what he had been doing: that 'when the latter was occupied in his works of mercy and charity, he (Raphael) offered his prayer to the Lord'. https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12640b.htm
- THE JOHN 5 IDENTIFICATION IS NOT STATED AS FACT, BECAUSE THE ENCYCLOPEDIA CALLS IT A CONJECTURE AND THEN ARGUES FOR IT FROM A LITURGY THAT NO LONGER EXISTS. 'Many commentators, however, identify Raphael with the "angel of the Lord" mentioned in John 5. This conjecture is based both on the significance of the name and on the healing role attributed to Raphael'. The article then says the conjecture 'is confirmed by the official Liturgy of the Church' — but the liturgy it means is the pre-1969 Office and Mass of 24 October, whose readings it has just described, and that liturgy is gone. A conjecture confirmed by an abolished office is not a fact.
- Benedict XVI, homily at episcopal ordinations on the feast of the Archangels, 29 September 2007 — the only substantive papal text on Raphael located, and the longest of the three angel sections in it. Source of 'the Angel to whom is entrusted the task of healing', of 'He heals the disturbed communion between a man and a woman. He heals their love. He drives out the demons who over and over again exhaust and destroy their love', and of the reading of the blindness as blindness to God. NOTE FOR ANYONE WEIGHING TOBIT'S GENRE: in the same passage the pope writes that 'In Tobit's account, this healing is recounted with legendary images.' https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/homilies/2007/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20070929_episc-ordinations.html
- NO PATRONAGE IS RECORDED. SCOPE: both held documents searched for 'patron'; ZERO OCCURRENCES in either. He is widely called patron of travellers, of the sick, of nurses and of happy meetings, and no held document declares any of it. patronages is empty, as for Gabriel and for the same reason.
- HE HAS NO FEAST OF HIS OWN. The current calendar gives 29 September to all three archangels together — 'Ss Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, Archangels' — and the celebration is a FEAST rather than a memorial. https://www.liturgyoffice.org.uk/Calendar/Universal/SepUC.shtml
- 24 OCTOBER IS A TRAP AND IS NOT IN THIS RECORD — THE SIXTH INSTANCE IN THE CORPUS, after Catherine of Siena's 30 April, the 17 September stigmata commemoration under Francis of Assisi, Clare of Assisi's pre-reform dating, Monica's 4 May and Michael's 8 May. The encyclopedia states it flatly: 'The Church assigns the feast of St. Raphael to 24 October.' It did, until 1969. SCOPE: the held October calendar file was checked for the 24th, which now carries St Anthony Mary Claret and no Raphael. The article's entire closing paragraph describes the Office and Mass of that abolished feast — the Epistle 'taken from the twelfth chapter of Tobias', the Gospel from John 5 — and none of it is current.