Friday, November 16, 2012

st. Raphael, pray for us



The other day I was driving home with my parents from a doctor’s appointment, when I got pulled over by police for speeding.

As I honestly acknowledged to the very polite officer that I was mistaken about the speed limit, I could hear Mami next to me whispering something.

“Don’t worry, St.Raphael will take care of us,” she assured me as I watched the policeman walk away with my driver’s license and insurance information.


Sure enough, the officer returned a few minutes later, handed me a warning ticket to sign, and put his hand on my window, “Please be careful.

Mami just smiled. I was so stunned by the fact that the officer had not given me a ticket, that I accidentally may have made the car tires screech as I pulled out into the street. True story.

From the Old Testament story in the book of Tobit (read about it here), I knew that St. Raphael is the patron of healing. But I had to look up how he applied to my story!

The Healing of Tobit  by Domenico Feti  c. 1620

The name Raphael, in fact, translates in Hebrew as, "It is God who heals,”
 "God Heals,” or "God, Please Heal.” He is an archangel of Judaism and Christianity, who in the Christian tradition is the patron of: the blind, of happy meetings, of nurses, of physicians and of travelers.

So... was it my blindness to the speed limit? My traveling? My happy meeting with the officer?

St. Raphael, pray for us!

Wall at St. William's Catholic Church
Round Rock, TX

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