Saturday, November 6 , 2004
Raphael, Bishop of Brooklyn
3rd Vespers, Raphael of Brooklyn: Wisdom 4:7-15 Epistle: Hebrews 7:26-8:3
Gospel: St. John 10:9-16
Wisdom 4:7-15 RSV, especially vs. 15: "....God's grace and mercy are with
His elect, and He watches over His holy ones." Indeed, two of the primary energies by which
we know God and by which love is enkindled in us for our Father in Heaven are His grace and
mercy. Love for Christ our God and Savior is the most evident response of our souls whenever
considering His mercy in becoming the Way for us to salvation and eternal life. Likewise,
thanksgiving to God the Holy Spirit abounds in the hearts of every soul who struggles to advance
toward purity, sanctification, and theosis; for by the Spirit of God the Faithful discern that Divine
grace completes our paltry efforts to attain true godliness in this present life.
When we examine the lives of the Saints such as the faithful Bishop of Brooklyn, Saint Raphael,
we find grace and mercy at every juncture in their careers. The mercy of God spared Saint
Raphael and his parents even before his birth for, during a pogrom by militant Muslims against
the Christian population of Damascus, the family successfully fled to Beirut.
By the grace of God, the child of the Hawaweenys was named for one of the great Archangels,
Raphael. While a young boy doing well in schoolwork, he was threatened by the family's
financial distress with having his education cut short, but the mercy of God provided a benefactor
who obtained his entrance into the Patriarchal school. By his industry and God's grace he
graduated and applied to the Ecumenical Patriarch's school of Theology on the island of Halki;
but an examination by the school's doctors declared him, even as newly tonsured monk, to be too
thin and weak for the hardships of study. Again, the mercy of God raised up an intermediary who
obtained both the young monk's admission and the Patriarch himself was moved by the mercy of
God to provide for his daily needs, so that after the three years of study, he graduated, was
ordained, and shortly afterwards began serving in Moscow as the representative of the Patriarch
of Antioch to the Russian Orthodox Church in Russia.
After three years in Moscow, God's grace again mercifully led Saint Raphael to service as an
Instructor in Greek and Arabic at the Seminary in Kazan, from which, after two years, he
received a call to minister to the immigrant Arab Christians in the new world, bringing him to
New York in 1895. Not only did Saint Raphael serve his congregation in Brooklyn, but also he
traveled repeatedly across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, seeking the lost sheep of
Christ. The Holy Synod of Moscow approved the plan to ordain him as Bishop for the Syrian
Vicariate, which occurred in 1904. For the next eleven years, he served not only his own people
in Brooklyn, but also he founded other parish communities and assisted in the growth of the
North American Orthodox Church, becoming himself a vessel for the dissemination of God's
grace and mercy across the continent even as he exhausted his own health in doing so.
In 1911, Archbishop Platon honored St. Raphael with the following words: "This day...is
beautified by the intelligence, wisdom, zeal, concern, piety, perseverance and the patience of our
brother Bishop Raphael....May his anniversary be immortal and eternal...Have you not worked in
the Lord's field so that your seeds have brought forth fruits and yielded ten-fold? Have you not
made Orthodoxy and piety to grow, and preached the faith and the Gospel of salvation?....Have
you not visited the United States, Canada, and Mexico, preaching, counseling, teaching, and
performing services?...Have you not suffered grief, persecution, hunger, nakedness, even arrest,
for Christ's sake? And in all this you stood firm." What a vessel of God's grace and mercy!
O thrice-blessed Raphael, having received grace from God. thou didst let thy light shine so
brightly...that all of those who had been in darkness gave glory to our Father in heaven.