Patron Saint of Healing
St. Raphael the Archangel, feast day 29 September
St. Raphael the Archangel is the patron saint of healing, with his feast on 29 September. His name means God heals, and the Book of Tobit is an account of him restoring sight and driving off a demon. AngelGuard publishes his story and the saints invoked for specific illnesses.
Quick facts
Why St. Raphael the Archangel?
Raphael’s name is the patronage. It means God heals, and the Book of Tobit exists largely to demonstrate it. The story is one of the most human in Scripture. A young man sets out on a journey and is accompanied by a stranger who is helpful, practical, and entirely ordinary in manner. Over the course of the road the companion arranges a marriage, drives off a demon that had killed seven previous husbands, and provides the means by which the young man’s father is cured of blindness. Only at the end does he say what he is: one of the seven who stand before God. What makes it useful rather than merely dramatic is the disguise. Anyone who has ever suspected in hindsight that help was present without being recognised at the time is reading their own experience in that book, and the Church has never treated that reading as sentimental. For specific conditions other saints are invoked. St. Peregrine for cancer, St. Luke as patron of physicians, St. Dymphna for illness of the mind, St. Agatha for breast cancer. Raphael covers healing as such, and is also invoked for travellers and for those seeking a spouse, both from the same book.
How to ask their intercession
Ask for the healing plainly, then ask for the eyes to recognise the help when it comes, since the whole point of his story is that it arrived unrecognised. And as with every healing devotion: this accompanies medical care rather than replacing it.