Posted by Today we celebrate the Feast of St. Raphael, as well as commemorating the Twenty Second Sunday after Pentecost. St. Raphael is one of the three archangels accorded feast days by the Church, the others being St. Michael and St. Gabriel. St. Raphael is especially associated with the ministry of healing.
But what are angels and what is their distinctive role? Angels are spirits without bodies of any kind. St. John of Damascus states that God is “the maker and creator of the angels, who brought them into being from having no existence; forming them in his own image, with a bodiless nature, as a spirit, or immaterial fire… An angel then, is an intellectual being, ever in movement, possessing free will, bodiless, ministering to God, by grace having an immortal nature, the form and limit of whose being the creator alone knoweth.” Their spiritual nature does not imply that they are everywhere present, or that they know all things, for they are creatures rather than the creator. Some of the angels fell into sin, the most powerful of these being Satan, the chief of the angels who fell. The cause of their fall is usually held to be pride. However, the angels most commonly referred to in the Bible are those who remained in the service of God. It is usually held they are in different ranks, namely seraphim, cherubim, thrones, dominions, powers, authorities, princedoms, archangels, angels. There has been much speculation from the early days of the Church about the respective roles of angels in their different ranks. However, the explanations given by many justifying a clear cut distinction between the different offices do not appear to be satisfactory. For instance, it has been held that some angels are mainly preoccupied with the contemplation of God, while others with ministration to men. But in the Book of Isaiah the seraphim are represented as not only worshipping God, but also in ministering to men (Isaiah 6). In St. Luke’s Gospel the archangel Gabriel is said to stand in the presence of God, but also ministers to men (Luke 1). It is therefore best to avoid excessive speculation about the different roles of different ranks of angels. There is a danger of falling into the elaborate systems of the Gnostic heresy, since those who believed in salvation by esoteric knowledge were often preoccupied with devising speculative systems based on different ranks of angels.
While excessive speculation about the nature of angelic ranks is best avoided, there are three archangels whose names are clearly given in the Bible, St. Michael, St. Gabriel and St. Raphael. Both St. Michael and St. Gabriel are referred to in the New Testament, while St. Raphael appears in the Book of Tobit (which we heard in today’s Epistle). The Book of Tobit also refers to seven angels of different rank, of whom Raphael is one. An even greater number of names are mentioned in later Jewish writings such as the Book of Enoch. However, all these names, with the exception of Michael, Gabriel and Raphael were rejected in Western Councils in the eighth century, which is why among the angels we only celebrate the feasts of Michael, Gabriel and Raphael.
In the Bible the angels are described as worshipping God in the books of Job, Isaiah and Revelation. The Epistle to the Hebrews states that the angels are ministering spirits sent forth to do service for the sake of them that shall inherit salvation. They not only minister in the worship of God, but also work for men. They give help in prayer, as referred to in the Book of Revelation where an angel is described as adding incense to the prayers of the saints ascending before God (Revelation 8). They give succour in life, as when in the Acts of the Apostles St. Peter is delivered from prison through the instrumentality of an angel (Acts 12). They give care after death, as in the parable of Dives and Lazarus, when the beggar died and was carried away by the angels into Abraham’s bosom (Luke 16). For the purpose of helping men, guardian angels are assigned to each person. Thus, little children are not to be despised because their angels in heaven always behold the face of God who is in heaven. It is usually held that guardian angels are assigned to every human being, not only the baptised. The angels also have work to perform on the day of judgement, and in carrying out the war against the evil angels and the dark forces that seem so powerful in this world.
The dual role of angels in both worshipping God and ministering to men is shown in the role of the archangel Raphael in the Book of Tobit. The Book of Tobit was probably written at some stage between the time of Ezra and Nehemiah and the Maccabean wars. It exhorts the faithful to prayer, fasting and almsgiving, as well as care for the dead. The book tells how Tobit became blind. St. Raphael told Tobias what remedy he had to use to heal his father’s sight, accompanied and protected him on his journey, helped him to find a wife and warded off the wiles of the devil. St. Raphael is said to appear to Tobias saying that “prayer is good with fasting and alms, more than to lay up treasures of gold: for alms delivereth from death, and the same is that which purgeth away sins, and maketh to find mercy and life everlasting. But they that commit sin and iniquity are enemies to their own soul… When thou didst pray with tears, and didst bury the dead, and didst leave thy dinner, and hide the dead by day in thine house, and bury them by night, I offered thy prayer unto the Lord… And now the Lord hath sent me to heal thee, and to deliver Sara, thy son’s wife from the devil. For I am the angel Raphael, one of the seven who stand before God (Tobit 12).”
The significance of the Book of the Tobit and the angelic ministry of St. Raphael is that it shows that recognising the importance of the ministry of angels is not simply a matter of speculation but a way to enter more deeply into the divine work of healing in a fallen world of sickness and death. An understanding of the ministry of angels should not be seen as a way of abandoning concern for the needs of the world for healing, but a way of becoming more deeply involved in the work of healing and restoration. The angels both worship God and serve men, and the human race, made in the image of God, should also seek not only to worship the creator, but also serve one another.
Let us pray that we will be aided by the intercession of the angels in participating in the divine work of healing and restoration in a world of sickness and death.