Divine help: the archangel Raphael

This is an artist's rendition of the archangel Raphael. Raphael, along with his winged compatriots Michael and Gabriel, is held in many traditions to be one of the archangels; indeed, though we have no real knowledge of how many archangels there are, these three generally get most of the attention.

Most of what is generally accepted about the archangels comes from the Bible. Michael gets some great publicity from that whole book of Revelation (or, as they called in days of yore, Apocalypse), doing his thing and leading the armies of God (making him someone we should consider requesting God send to help our fight against abortion, at least the spiritual side of it). Gabriel, of course, gets street cred from Luke (the gospel writer, not the aspiring Jedi), explaining to Mary, the mother of Jesus, that, well, Jesus would occur. Raphael, though, is a slightly more interesting case.


Most of our stories about Raphael come from the book of Tobit. At least some of you might be unfamiliar with this book, a position that is reasonable considering it is what Catholics and Orthodox (I think) call the "deuterocanon", or "secondary canon", and what many Christians call the "apocrypha," a set of works that they don't hold at the same level as, say, Genesis or the gospels, books solidly in the canon for them.* Nevertheless, it provides information on Raphael, and we will use that information in our discussion of him.

Raphael is described as being sent by God to answer the prayers of two faithful servants of God, Tobit and Sarah. Tobit had gone blind and was begging God to die. Sarah had been married 7 times and had each husband die between the ceremony and, umm, the marital bed... because a demon (Asmodeus, a name familiar to any Wheel of Time fans, I'm sure) was, well, stalking her, for lack of a better term. Raphael helped Tobit's son Tobias run a few errands (out near Sarah, actually), eventually leading to Tobias marrying Sarah and Tobit getting cured.


Raphael appears to Tobias as a man calling himself Azarias, son of Ananias, and offers to guide Tobias out on his journey to run a few errands. Along the way Raphael helps Tobias catch a fish (apparently, they only needed to eat once on this long journey of theirs...) and then take out important parts, specifically various bits of, um, insides, telling him that some parts help cure various conditions like cataracts and others are useful for driving out demons. When they get to the house of Raguel (Sarah's father), the man to whom Tobias' errands took him, Raphael plays matchmaker and, well, helps get those two lovebirds hitched, even after Tobias heard the story of the 7 prior marriages. Knowing there was a demon, Tobias followed Raphael's advice and, burning the fish guts like incense, drove the demon from stalking Sarah. Raphael then chased down Asmodeus and bound him in the desert. After celebrating the wedding feast with Tobias and Sarah, Raphael leads them to Tobias' father Tobit, whereupon he helps Tobias cure the cataracts that had made him go blind. Finally, after one of the greatest happy endings in the bible occurs, he reveals that he is Raphael and doesn't need payment for his services, and then returns to heaven.

This is quite a great story, and there are some wonderfully lyric prayers and soliloquies in the work. Let's take a minute, though, to summarize what we know about Raphael from the story.

1. Master of disguise. He fools everybody into thinking he was a human rather than an angel.
2. Excellent in nature. He helps Tobias catch a fish, using nature to sustain them, and was also a great guide on their journey.
3. Resourceful. He taught Tobias how to use what he had--in this case, a fish--to do many different things, and helped him preserve it until needed.
4. Spiritual/mystical. He understood how to drive out demons, presupposing belief in them and knowledge of their ways.
5. Great tracker. He caught up with Asmodeus once he had been driven from Sarah, which brings us to...
6. Excellent in combat. He overcame Asmodeus and bound him in the desert.
7. Well learned. He understands medicine and how to cure cataracts.

What do these 7 things mean? These traits all describe a certain, somewhat mythical figure. Therefore, there can only be one conclusion. Raphael the archangel is Raphael the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

* This is not to say that such Christians disrespect all of the apocryphal books; although some are apocryphal because they are widely held to be fraudulent accounts of things, others are apocryphal because they just don't rise to the same level as Scripture. Many Christians treat such works, like Tobit, as good sources for teaching, but not quite as good as what they fully accept as Scripture. Think of it this way--a physics textbook may be good for teaching, but it isn't Scripture. Many feel the same way about Tobit.