St. Raphael, pray for us! - Rector's Rambling for September 21, 2018

The Holy Angels have gotten a lot of mentions the last few weeks.  On September 29, the Church celebrated the Feast of St. Michael and all Angels, which we celebrated the next day at St. John’s on Sunday.  On the Tuesday following, the feast day was The Holy Guardian Angels.  This week, the angels come up again as we celebrate the Feast of St. Raphael the Archangel.

Ss. Michael and Gabriel are the archangels mentioned by name in the Gospels and the Book of Revelation, but Raphael might be harder for you to find.  He is mentioned in the Book of Tobit, which is a part of the King James Bible that is omitted by many American Protestant publishers.  That section is known as the Apocrypha, or deuterocanonical books.  They were written between the Old and New Testaments, and are considered canonical (valid) by the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican Communions (which make up 80% of Christians worldwide).  In the later parts of the Reformation, churches began removing these books because of questions of authority (now resolved by historical fact), as well as theological issues inconvenient to their changes to the Church.

Tobit is a good and holy man, who has made it his ministry to bury the Jews who have been killed and bodies disregarded in the foreign town he lives in.  Stricken with blindness, he sends his son to get some money on deposit with a family in another town so that they can continue to pay their living expenses.  Unsure of the way, a man identifying himself as a relative offers to take the son Tobias on the journey.  Unknown to all until the end, it is really the Archangel Raphael in disguise.

St. Raphael is the archangel of healing, and the adventure recorded for us includes healing of a woman to become Tobias’ wife, as well as Tobit at the end.  It is a wonderful story, full of twists and turns.  It is not long, so take some time today to give it a read.  If your Bible doesn’t have it, try reading it on-line at http://ebible.org/kjv/Tobit.htm