Saint Raphael the Archangel

That guide is the Archangel Raphael. And the whole story is found in a small book of fourteen chapters: the book of Tobit.

Unlike Michael with his sword or Gabriel with his message, Raphael appears in the most ordinary guise: a young man looking for work, hired as a guide for a drachma a day. He walks hundreds of kilometers with his companions, eats with them, rests with them, shows them how to cook a fish, how to ask for a bride, how to heal a father’s eyes. Only when everything is done does he reveal who he is. Perhaps that is why, of the three archangels, Raphael is the closest to everyday life: he is the angel of journeys, of illnesses, of marriages, of families going through hard times.

The book of Tobit has had a strange fate. The Jewish people did not include it in the Hebrew Bible, and later our Protestant brothers and sisters did not accept it as Scripture either. But the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, following the tradition of the first Christians, have kept it as part of the word of God. For many centuries the book was known only in Greek and Latin, and many scholars thought it had originally been written in Greek. Then in 1952, in Cave 4 at Qumran by the Dead Sea, fragments of Tobit were found, copied by hand more than two thousand years ago: four in Aramaic and one in Hebrew. That means the story of Raphael was being read and copied by Jews before the time of Jesus, some of it in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke every day.

The story is set during the Assyrian exile, in the eighth century before Christ, when the northern tribes of Israel were carried off to Nineveh. It is not a chronicle; commentators see it as a teaching story, told to show people how to live their faith in a foreign land. But what it teaches is very real: living uprightly when no one is making you, showing mercy when you yourself are suffering, and trusting that God still walks beside you, even when you do not recognize Him.

One day, on the feast of Pentecost, when dinner had been set out, he sent his son to invite a poor man to come and eat with them. The son came back with news: one of their own people had been murdered and his body dumped in the marketplace. Tobit left his meal, went and carried the body home, and waited for nightfall to bury it. That night, unclean under the Law from touching a corpse, he did not go into the house but slept out in the courtyard, by the wall. He did not know there were sparrows nesting in the wall. Their droppings fell, still warm, into his eyes and left white films over them. The physicians treated him again and again, but it did no good. He went completely blind (Tob 2:9–10).

A man who had done good all his life ends up blind just because he slept in the wrong place, under a bird’s nest. The story does not explain why, just as real life so often does not explain why. Tobit fell on hard times, was reproached by his own wife, and one day begged God to let him die.

People in the household began to whisper. One maidservant even told Sarah to her face that she herself had killed her husbands. The girl was so hurt that she went up to the upper room of her father’s house, meaning to hang herself. But then she stopped, thinking of her father: she was his only child, and if she died like that, people would heap shame on him for the rest of his life. She knelt by the window, and instead of dying, she prayed (Tob 3:7–15).

The book of Tobit says that at the same moment, the prayer of the blind old man in Nineveh and the prayer of the girl widowed seven times in Ecbatana were heard before the glory of God. And Raphael was sent to heal them both.

Two people in two cities hundreds of kilometers apart, strangers to each other, despairing on the same day. They did not know that the answer to one would pass through the life of the other.

The advice he gave his son before the journey is one of the most beautiful passages in the book. He told his son to bury his mother when she died, and never to cause her sorrow. He told him to give alms according to his means: if you have much, give much; if you have little, do not be afraid to give even a little. He told him to pay hired workers the same day and not keep their wages overnight. And there is one sentence few people expect to find in the Old Testament: "Do to no one what you yourself dislike" (Tob 4:15). Hundreds of years before Jesus taught "Do to others whatever you would have them do to you," a blind old man told his son much the same thing in the simplest terms.

Tobias had never traveled far and did not know the way. He went to the marketplace to look for a guide, and met a young man who introduced himself as Azariah, son of Hananiah, a kinsman. He knew the road to Media and had stayed at Gabael’s house. Tobit questioned him carefully, then hired him for a drachma a day, promising something extra if he brought his son back safe.

As the two set off, the book of Tobit records a small detail: "The dog went along with him" (Tob 6:2). Elsewhere in the Bible, dogs are usually wild, unclean animals. This is one of the very few places where a dog appears as a beloved household pet, trotting after its master on a long journey. That detail later delighted Renaissance painters. The painting "Tobias and the Angel" from Verrocchio’s workshop in Florence, now in the National Gallery in London, has a small white dog running at their feet and a fish with scales gleaming like silver. Researchers believe it was the young apprentice in that workshop, Leonardo da Vinci, who painted the dog and the fish.

Then Raphael told him to do something strange: cut the fish open, keep the gall, the heart and the liver, and roast the flesh to eat on the way. Tobias asked what they were for. The guide replied that the heart and liver would drive away an evil spirit, and the gall, rubbed on eyes clouded by white films, would make them see again (Tob 6:1–9).

Because of this detail, the fish became Saint Raphael’s symbol in Christian art. In almost every painting, he is shown as a young man in traveling clothes, staff in hand, sometimes holding a fish, leading a boy by the hand.

As they drew near Ecbatana, Raphael told Tobias that they would stay that night at Raguel’s house, and that he had the right to ask for Raguel’s daughter Sarah in marriage, as her closest kinsman. Tobias was afraid: he had heard about the seven husbands who died. He was an only son; if he died, his elderly parents would die of grief. Raphael reassured him, and told him what to do on the wedding night.

In the bridal chamber, Tobias did as Raphael had told him and burned the fish’s heart and liver, and the demon fled. Then he said to his wife: "Sister, get up! Let us pray and ask the Lord to have mercy on us and save us." And before anything else, the young couple got up together and prayed (Tob 8:4–8).

That prayer, which recalls how God created Adam and gave him Eve as his helper and asks that the couple "find mercy and grow old together," is still one of the readings most often chosen for weddings. Many Catholic couples have heard it on their wedding day without knowing it comes from a wedding night full of fear, and from an angel’s advice.

The next morning, Raguel sent a maid into the room to look. She came out and reported: both were sound asleep. Raguel hurriedly had the grave filled in before daybreak, then held a wedding feast that lasted fourteen days.

Then one day, sitting by the road, the mother saw her son in the distance. The book of Tobit says the dog ran on ahead. She ran in to tell her husband. The blind old man groped his way to the door and stumbled. Tobias ran to hold his father up, then did as Raphael had told him: he rubbed the fish gall on his father’s eyes, blew into them, and peeled away the white films. Tobit saw his son, threw his arms around him and wept: "My child, I see you again, you are the light of my eyes!" (Tob 11:13–14).

Then Sarah arrived too. Tobit went out to the gate of Nineveh to meet his daughter-in-law, praising God as he walked. The townspeople were amazed to see him striding along with no one leading him.

"I am Raphael, one of the seven angels who stand before the Lord" (Tob 12:15). He told father and son that each time Tobit left his meal to go and bury the dead, it was he who brought Tobit’s prayer before God. He had come not because they had earned it, but because God willed it. And one sentence left them stunned: "All those days, you saw me eating, but in fact I ate nothing; what you saw was a vision" (Tob 12:19).

There is something worth pondering here: in all that long journey, no one recognized Raphael as an angel. He ate with them, slept under the same roof, talked over the road with them, and showed them very ordinary things. Tobias called him "brother Azariah." Tobit called him "my young friend." Only looking back did they understand who had been walking beside them.

In Spain, the city of Córdoba honors Raphael as its "Guardian of the City." In 1578, when plague was raging in the city, a priest named Andrés de las Roelas said that an angel had appeared to him several times, promising to save the city. Afraid of being deceived, he consulted the Jesuits, who advised him to ask the figure outright who he was the next time. At dawn on May 7, 1578, by his account, the angel answered: "I swear to you, by Jesus Christ crucified, that I am Raphael, whom God has placed as guardian of this city." The people of Córdoba built a church on the spot, called the Church of the Oath. Walking around the city today, you can still see about ten tall columns called "Triumphs," each topped with Saint Raphael holding a pilgrim’s staff, looking down over the old streets.

Also in Spain, in the sixteenth century, there was a man who had been a mercenary soldier and a traveling bookseller, then was converted and spent the rest of his life caring for the sick poor in Granada: Saint John of God, whose story you can read elsewhere in this app. He often carried those who could not walk on his back to his hospital. The old biographies say that at times, when he was worn out, Saint Raphael came to lend him a hand. That is why the Hospitaller Brothers he founded still honor Saint Raphael as one of their patrons.

Saint Raphael is honored as patron of travelers, of the sick, of physicians and pharmacists, of the blind, and of those looking for a spouse. In many places young people still ask him for a good meeting, like that of Tobias and Sarah.

In Vietnam many people bear Raphael’s name, and many Catholic hospitals and clinics around the world are named for him. But perhaps what he reminds us of most is not the miracles, but the way he came: unannounced, without a halo, in the guise of a hired man earning a drachma a day.

Perhaps everyone’s life has a "brother Azariah" or two. A friend who walks with us through a hard stretch of road. A devoted doctor on a night shift. A stranger who points the way just when we are lost. We do not recognize them at the time. Only looking back do we understand that God did not let us walk alone.

Blind Tobit had begged to die. Sarah had meant to hang herself. A little while later, both were sitting under one roof at a wedding feast, with eyes that could see and hearts at peace. Raphael’s story ends with Tobit praising God, who "strikes and then shows mercy." Not because every suffering has an explanation. But because in the middle of suffering, there is One still walking with us.