Embodied Mercies 9 comments

By Allison Backous
Guest Blogger

Allison Backous, a teacher and writer in Grand Rapids, Michigan, received her MFA in creative nonfiction at Seattle Pacific University.

O Raphael, lead us toward those we are waiting for, those who are waiting for us: Raphael, Angel of happy meeting, lead us by the hand toward those we are looking for. May all our movements be guided by your Light and transfigured with your joy.

Lonely and tired, crushed by the separations and sorrows of life, we feel the need of calling 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.

                                                     —Prayer to St. Raphael the Archangel, patron saint of travelers

The summer I turned nineteen, I lived with my father in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago. I spent most of the summer wandering: I rode the Blue and Brown Line trains for hours, making notes in my journal about the graffiti, the miles of telephone wires, the lots where short Mexican men sold gleaming copper pots along Milwaukee Avenue.

I was lonely and young, and the ache in my heart, while vague and unnamed, was strong; my family did not share my Christian faith, and I went to Sunday vespers by myself, passing the copper pots and having no one with whom to share their beauty, their particularity.

One afternoon, as I browsed a bookstore, my bag knocked a book off its display table. It was Paul Elie’s The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage. It was one of Augustine’s “take and read” moments, where the words are meant for you and the meaning brings your long search full circle. Here was a biography of four Catholics—Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Walker Percy, and Flannery O’Connor—who were pilgrims themselves, bent on beauty, aching for the home beyond the region of thunder.

And then there was St. Raphael the archangel, whose prayer got written on one of O’Connor’s postcards and sent to a friend a month before her death.

The prayer became my prayer, and Raphael my patron saint.

The book of Tobit, where Raphael’s account can be found, tells the story of Tobit, an older, devout Jew who is burdened by the daily grind and a long chain of misfortunes. When he loses his sight, he begs God to take his life.

As he prays this, a young woman named Sarah sits in her bridal chamber and also prays for death. Sarah has been married seven times, and each time, a demon breaks into the bridal chamber and murders the husband. “Take me out of the earth,” she says, “so that I may no longer have reproach.”

The rest of the story is a mix of fairy tale and catechism lesson: Tobit sends his son Tobias to collect a forgotten sum of money, and Tobias journeys to the land of Media, accompanied by a friendly stranger he meets on the road. When Tobias is attacked by a giant fish in a bathing pond, the stranger tells Tobias to gut the fish and keep his entrails.

Tobias meets and dines with Sarah and her family, and Tobias marries Sarah; when the demon reappears, Tobias, on his guide’s advice, brandishes the fish guts, which drives the demon away. When Tobias brings his new bride home, he rubs the guts on his father’s eyes. Tobit’s sight is restored, and the guide is revealed in his true glory: he is Raphael, the archangel, sent and disguised by God to accompany this small family in the restoration of their lives.

It is perhaps a cliché for a young writer, particularly a Protestant, to write about saints. “The patron saint of writers! Of single women! Of (fill-in-the-blank)!” But I did not go looking for St. Raphael. His prayer literally fell on me in that bookstore.

And he followed me everywhere. I found (and bought) an icon of him in Tucson, where I spent a summer learning to repeat the words “My mother is an alcoholic.” I even found a statue of St. Raphael in the Albuquerque airport, on my first trip to my first residency in the MFA program. Raphael accompanied me in every kind of travel I took: on planes, trains, car rides, therapy sessions. I longed for the loneliness to stop, for healing and restoration to come into the life of my own broken family, for glory to be revealed in such a way as to let me know that God was not so much powerful as simply present.

The primary ache of Raphael’s prayer is to no longer be a stranger, to know the concerns of one’s country, the kingdom of God. The kingdom is still coming, but it’s not here yet. Not in its full glory. And there are moments where the loneliness and sorrow I have felt are more real than anything close to mercy.

I get the sense that Raphael, sent by God, is secretly and silently working for the family’s good—there is no fanfare, no trumpet, no obvious clue as to how God is present. There are just embodied mercies: Raphael wears a cloak and walks on a road. It takes a literal rubbing of guts to lift Tobit’s blindness. Like the moment when Jesus spits into dirt to give another blind man his sight.

Grief and trouble are palpable mysteries, but so are sovereignty and providence, presence and grace.

How was I transfigured? How am I transfigured still? I look for embodied mercies, the particularities that show me how God is silently working for my good: the laughter of friends, the lines of a good poem, the memories of copper pots in sunlight.

May you find those embodied mercies yourself. May you find yourself no longer a stranger, but a pilgrim, accompanied on whatever road you are taking, the road beyond the region of thunder.