Patron Saint of Healing

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.

Who was St. Raphael the Archangel?

Raphael is one of three angels named in Scripture, and the only one whose story is told at length. The book of Tobit has him travel in disguise with a young man named Tobias, on a journey neither the boy nor his blind father understands the purpose of.

Along the way he arranges a marriage, drives off a demon that had killed seven previous husbands, and finally shows Tobias how to cure his father of blindness. Only at the end does he say who he is: I am Raphael, one of the seven angels who stand before the glory of the Lord. The name means God heals.

He is one of only three angels the Church names, and the Catechism is careful about what may be said of any of them: they are pure spirits, servants and messengers, and their whole existence is turned toward God and toward the people God sends them to. Raphael is the one who demonstrates that in a story long enough to watch it happen.

What the story keeps insisting on is that nobody recognises him. Tobias hires a travelling companion. The father sends his son off with a stranger. The healing that follows is arranged by someone they have been talking to for weeks without knowing. Anyone who has been ill has usually had some version of that afterwards: the help that turned out to matter came from a direction nobody was watching.

The feast: September 29

September 29, kept with Michael and Gabriel as the feast of the Archangels. He is invoked for healing of body and mind, for travellers, and traditionally for those looking for a spouse, all three of which come straight out of the book of Tobit. Hospitals and pharmacies across Europe carry his name.

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.