The young man went out and the angel went with him; and the dog came out with him and went along with them.

Tobit 6:1-2

 

A Prayer to St Raphael, Angel of Happy Meetings

O Raphael, lead us towards those we are waiting for, those who are waiting for us! Raphael, Angel of Happy Meetings, lead us by the hand towards those we are looking for! May all our movements, all their movements, be guided by your Light and transfigured by your Joy.

Angel Guide of Tobias, lay the request we now address to you at the feet of Him on whose unveiled Face you are privileged to gaze. Lonely and tired, crushed by the separations and sorrows of earth, we feel the need of calling to you and of pleading for the protection of your wings, so that we may not be as strangers in the Province of Joy, all ignorant of the concerns of our country.

Remember the weak, you who are strong—you whose home lies beyond the region of thunder, in a land that is always peaceful, always serene, and bright with the resplendent glory of God.

Amen.

Traditional Catholic

 

 

“A Prayer to St Raphael, Angel of Happy Meetings” is said to have been a favourite prayer of both Dorothy Day and Flannery O’Connor (who exchanged some letters but never met in person). The Book of Tobit, to which this prayer refers, though included in the Catholic and Orthodox versions of The Bible, did not make it into the Protestant canon—but it is charming nonetheless (and may be found in the King James Version’s Apocrypha). It concerns a young man named Tobias who sets out on what proves to be a very eventful journey, with an angel and a dog as his companions. He doesn’t know that his apparently human companion is the Angel Raphael, and nobody knows whether the dog is his own, a stray, another disguised angel, or a symbol of some kind. The quiet, faithful dog reminds me of the random, cryptically theological stray dogs of Michael Leunig: “When the heart/ Is cut or cracked or broken…/ Let a stray dog lick it…”

May all our movements, all their movements… How dizzying, how wondrous, is the chain of causation! How do we fathom the complexity of the separate stories that lead, somehow, to that intersection of parallel lines which is a meeting between two people?

Crushed by the separations and sorrows of earth… And how do we heal from the grief of estrangement?

Let us give thanks for the happy meetings in our own lives—our first, apparently chance encounters with friends and guides and mentors, with artistic or literary or musical or vocational collaborators, with husbands or wives or partners—without which our lives would be unimaginably poorer. And let us give thanks for those who introduced us!

Let us pray for healing from those meetings we regard as unhappy, either for us, or for the one we met, or for both—and let us pray that some good might nonetheless come out of them.

Let us look forward to the happy meetings—and meetings-again or reconciliations—yet to come!

And in our goings out and our comings in, may we always be accompanied by an angel… and blessed by a friendly dog!

tobit

8 thoughts on “The Angel of Happy Meetings”

  2. As a Proddy, I’m not familiar with the story of Tobias and the angel and the dog. Time to run and find out, as Miss Cromwell would say.

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    1. It’s a gem! I first came upon it as a children’s picture book when I was working at The School Magazine. (And to tell you the truth I think that was the first time I realised—and this really took me aback—that the Catholic and Protestant canons were different. I had thought both had the same opinions about what was Apocrypha.)

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  3. Ah, Cassandra, I remember your scepticism when I told you about Tobias being blinded by bird poop landing in his eyes. You thought I was making it up – as if such a story could be in the Bible! You can imagine my gratification to see you quoting from Tobit at length.

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    1. I doubt very much that I was sceptical for that reason. I was well aware by that stage that the Bible is a very earthy collection of writings! What I truly was astonished by (as I said above) was the differences between the major denominations in what was regarded as canonical. It confirmed my sense that, ideally, people of different affiliations ought to be as familiar as possible with other Christian traditions. What a tragedy, to miss out on such treasures! And I think the different traditions have a tendency to temper and balance each other, when in dialogue. This is one of the reasons Rowan Williams is such a hero of mine—he just seems to be across EVERYTHING. (Notably Russian Orthodoxy.)

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  4. Well, I have to admit that it does sound EXACTLY like the kind of thing that you might have said to get my goat—and you would have been entirely successful. It’s not the Bible that has any problem with the unromantic—it’s me. But the Bible is romantic too. It’s everything, really.

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  5. Pingback: The Angel of Happy Meetings: Press This | Mederium

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