Who is St. Raphael the Archangel?
Raphael is one of the three angels whom Scripture names, and everything we know about him comes from one book, the Book of Tobit, called Tobias in the Douay-Rheims Bible. The Catholic Encyclopedia gives his name's meaning as "God has healed," and the story bears it out.
The book opens with two prayers said on the same day in two distant cities. In Nineveh, old Tobit, an exile who has buried the dead at the risk of his life, has gone blind and asks God to let him die. In Media, a young woman named Sara has lost seven husbands to a demon and prays the same prayer. The Douay-Rheims text says: "At that time the prayers of them both were heard in the sight of the glory of the most high God: And the holy angel of the Lord, Raphael was sent to heal them both" (Tobias 3:24-25).
Tobit, expecting to die, sends his son, the younger Tobias, to collect a debt in Media and tells him to find a companion for the road. The boy goes out and finds "a beautiful young man, standing girded, and as it were ready to walk," and "not knowing that he was an angel of God," he hires him (5:5-6). The stranger calls himself "Azarias the son of the great Ananias" (5:18). The old man blesses the journey with words Catholics still use for travelers: "May you have a good journey, and God be with you in your way, and his angel accompany you" (5:21).
The Catholic Encyclopedia summarizes what follows: on the road Raphael binds the demon "who had previously slain seven husbands of Sara," and at home the father's blindness is healed. Franciscan Media counts a "threefold happy ending": the healing of Tobit's blindness, Tobias's marriage to Sara, and the restoration of the family fortune. Only then does the companion say who he is. "When thou didst pray with tears, and didst bury the dead ... I offered thy prayer to the Lord," he tells the family. "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 the Lord" (12:12, 14-15). Before he goes he leaves them one line that reads like a rule of life: "Prayer is good with fasting and alms more than to lay up treasures of gold" (12:8).
The Encyclopedia adds that many commentators have identified Raphael with the unnamed angel who stirred the water at the pool in John 5; it calls this a conjecture drawn from his name and his healing work in Tobit. Franciscan Media sums up the three archangels in six words: "Michael protects; Gabriel announces; Raphael guides."
Why Catholics pray to St. Raphael for healing, protection and a good marriage
None of St. Raphael's patronages were declared by a pope. They come straight from the book. Franciscan Media lists him as patron of the blind and of travelers; the rest is tradition built on the same chapters.
Healing first. He is sent "to heal them both," and the two healings are of different kinds: an old man's eyes, and a young woman's deliverance from something that had killed everyone she loved. People with a long illness, people with a sickness of the mind or of the household, people who have prayed "with tears" for years and wonder whether anyone heard: this is their angel. Raphael's own words answer the question. The prayer was carried to God on the day it was said.
Protection second. He walks the whole road with Tobias, there and back, as a companion the boy did not know was an angel. Catholics ask his prayers before a journey, a move, a deployment, a first day somewhere new.
Marriage third. Raphael did not only protect Tobias; he led him to Sara, a woman no one would have chosen for him, and made the marriage possible. That is why a long tradition calls him the angel of happy meetings, why single Catholics ask him to bring them to the right spouse, and why married ones ask him to heal what has come between them.
How to pray to St. Raphael
His feast is September 29, which he shares with Michael and Gabriel; the General Roman Calendar ranks it as a Feast. This is a change within living memory. The Catholic Encyclopedia, writing in 1911, says "the Church assigns the feast of St. Raphael to 24 October." Franciscan Media says the memorials of Gabriel and Raphael were added to the Roman calendar in 1921, and that "the 1970 revision of the calendar joined their individual feasts to Michael's." A novena can be prayed September 20 to 28, or on the nine days before a journey, an operation or a wedding.
Say the prayer below, and then tell him the road you are on. If you are sick, name the illness; if you are waiting for someone, say so. Pair it with Confession and the Eucharist. If the need is a diagnosis, prayer to St. Raphael accompanies the doctor's treatment and never replaces it; Tobias still had to make the journey and do what the angel told him. And remember how the story ends. The angel tells the family to bless God "in the sight of all that live" (12:6). When the answer comes, say thank you out loud.