Raphael

The holy Archangel Raphael (in Hebrew Rafa'el, "God has healed") is one of the greatest angels of God, named in the Book of Tobit, in the Old Testament of the Orthodox Church, as the companion and protector of Tobias and the healer of Tobit. He is celebrated on 8 November (21 November by the new calendar), on the day of the synaxis of the archangels and all the heavenly powers.

The name and his place in Scripture

The name Raphael comes from the root "rapha", to heal, the same as in the modern Hebrew word for physician, whence the gift of healer attributed to the angel. Of the seven angels known in the angelology of post-⁠exilic Judaism, only Michael and Gabriel are named in the Scriptures considered canonical by all Christians. Raphael is named in the Book of Tobit, which is in the Old Testament for the Orthodox and the Catholics, canonical for the Catholics. The other four are Uriel, Raguel, Sariel and Jeremiel, according to the First Book of Enoch, chapter 20, written in the second century before Christ. Raphael is mentioned in Tobit and in Enoch, books dated to the third and second centuries before Christ. In later Jewish tradition he was identified with one of the three heavenly visitors received by Abraham at the oak of Mamre. He is not named in the New Testament, and later Christian tradition linked him with healing and with the angel who stirred the water at the pool of Bethesda in the Gospel of John (5:2-4).

In the Book of Tobit

In the Book of Tobit the angel appears in human form and becomes the companion of Tobias, son of Tobit, giving his name as "Azarias, of the line of Ananias the Great". In the course of the journey his protecting powers are shown, above all the driving out and binding, in Upper Egypt, of the demon who had killed seven husbands of Sarah, daughter of Raguel, who was later to be Tobias' wife. Raphael had Tobias catch a great fish, then taught him how to cure his father's blindness with the fish's gall and how to drive off the demon by burning its heart and liver. For this reason he is often depicted with a large fish in his hand. After the return home and the healing of Tobit's blindness, Raphael reveals himself: "I am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels who present the prayers of the saints and enter before the glory of the Holy One". One may see here a link with the unnamed angels of the Revelation of John. Of his powers of healing, no more is known than what he said to Tobit, that he was sent by God to cure him of blindness and to free Sarah, Tobias' future wife, from the evil spirit Asmodeus.

In the Book of Enoch and in other traditions

In the apocryphal Book of Enoch, Raphael is counted second among the archangels, after Michael. He binds Azazel, who taught people crafts and thereby corrupted them, hand and foot, puts him in darkness in a hole in the desert of Dudael, covers him with rough and sharp stone, and on the great day of judgment Azazel will be cast into fire. The book calls him "one of the holy angels, the angel of the spirits of men" and says he showed Enoch the four places in which human souls wait for the Last Judgment; standing at the throne of the Lord, he "praises the Elect One and the elect". In the First Book of Enoch, chapter 54, with Michael, Gabriel and Phanuel, he will seize, on the day of judgment, the hosts of Azazel and throw them into the furnace of fire. Gnostic tradition represents him on the Ophite diagram.

In Islam, Raphael is honored as one of the great archangels, under the name Israfil, understood to be the unnamed angel of Quran 6:73, who stands eternally with the trumpet at his lips, ready to announce the Day of Judgment. Among these, for the Orthodox Church canonical Scripture and the Fathers count; the other traditions are mentioned here only as the history of the name. In the Catholic Church his day entered the Roman liturgical year in 1921, on 24 October, and from 1969 was moved to 29 September, together with Michael and Gabriel. He is regarded as patron of physicians and travelers.