Wondering if anyone has prayed to this saint and how efficacious it was. My biggest fear is losing the right person, marrying the wrong person, or being destined for loneliness. I am terrible with novenas…but I feel a surge of love for someone in my past and I was wondering if this would help clear my head.
I didn’t have a devotion to St. Raphael the Archangel until I was 62 years of age. I had known of and heard the name but never looked deeply enough.
Not too long after our 41st anniversary, my husband’s prostate cancer had become bone cancer, and he was near death. He had home hospice for just a few days before his death, and that gave me respite from some caregiving. I would sit beside him as he lay in bed and every day pray some prayers to St. Raphael, as I had rediscovered a small prayer booklet about him.
There was a prayer of consecration to St. Raphael, a prayer for a spouse, and a litany asking him for prayers. My husband had an extraordinary death! He had gone to confession for the first time in forty years of his own volition a few months prior to his death. All of our eight children, who lived all over the U.S. were able to make it before his death. My oldest son led a prayer meeting around the bed, where we shared some Scripture, and then thanked him for the various ways that he was a good father. We then played the song he requested to be played at his funeral (when he could still speak), and that was “On Eagle’s Wings.”
When we discussed that I said I would have that same song at my funeral.
The day at the wake, and the day of the funeral was as though I was floating along full of peace and joy. My daughters and daughters-in-law took me to a department store at a nearby mall (before the funeral, but after his death) and bought me a new black dress with a jacket with white embroidery on it so that I could use it again and again. They bought me little pearl earrings, stockings, etc.
After his death and everyone went home I was able to sell the truck and the boat, in the weeks that followed, with no problem. (I had never dealt with such things before.). My dear friends who came to the viewing and the funeral Mass said I had such a peaceful glow about me, and I did feel it.
This was such a special time for me, and it seem that I was very confident that this was all due to the intercession of St. Raphael. I am still devoted to this Archangel, and fifteen years have now passed since my husband’s death.
Do a search for prayers to St. Raphael online, unless you already have some handy.
May Jesus and Mary be with you, along with St. Raphael!
