Raphael — Rapha’el, “God heals” — is the archangel of healing and the compassionate guide of travelers, the celestial physician who binds wounds, drives out demons, and walks unseen beside those upon the road. His is the gentlest of the great angelic offices, and the most intimate with human suffering.
The Companion on the Road
Raphael’s great story is told in the Book of Tobit. There the angel, concealing his nature under the name Azarias, accompanies the young Tobias on a perilous journey, protecting him, securing his marriage, and guarding him from the demon [asmodeus], who had slain seven bridegrooms. Raphael teaches Tobias to use the heart, liver, and gall of a fish — the smoke to drive off the demon, the gall to cure his father’s blindness. Only at the journey’s end does the angel reveal himself: “I am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels who stand and enter before the glory of the Lord.”
The Healer of Heaven
From this tale Raphael takes his enduring character as the angel of medicine and wholeness. Jewish legend makes him one of the angels who visited and healed Abraham, the keeper of the healing arts, and the spirit set over the bodies of human beings. He is invoked against sickness and plague, the binder of demons that bring disease, and the patron of all who heal. In the lists of the archangels who stand before the divine presence, Raphael is the third great prince, beside Michael and Gabriel.
God Heals
Raphael embodies a tender theology written into his very name: that the same God who judges and makes war also mends what is broken. He is the angel of the merciful aspect of heaven — restorer of sight, comforter of the afflicted, guardian of the wanderer. In an order of beings more often armed with swords and trumpets, Raphael carries the physician’s gall and the traveler’s staff, and his presence is the assurance that healing, too, is a heavenly power.