Mention the archangels and most people will think of St Michael and St Gabriel. Holy Tradition, however, numbers seven in total with Raphael and Uriel listed by all the sources. There is some disagreement over the identities of the other three. The book of Enoch for example, included in the Ethiopian Scriptural Canon and quoted in the new Testament in the book of Jude (1:14-15), has a quite different list to those of St Dionysios the Aeropagite and Saint Gregory the Great. Let us stick to firm ground here and consider those two Archangels other than Michael and Gabriel that all these lists contain, Raphael and Uriel.

Raphael comes from a composite Hebrew word meaning “the God who heals.” He appears in the book of Tobit in the Old Testament as the unknown (at first) travelling companion of Tobiah, the son of Tobit. Archangel Raphael heals Tobit of his blindness, making himself known as: “the Angel Raphael, one of the seven, who stand before the Lord.” (Tobit 12:15). Although Raphael does not appear by name in the New Testament, in Holy Tradition he is taken to be the angel who stirred the waters at the pool of Bethesda from which many lame and crippled people emerged fully healed. He is venerated as the patron of travellers, the blind, medical workers, and, strangely perhaps, matchmakers!

We know of course that it is God who heals and at the pool of Bethesda this was made perfectly clear when Raphael’s ministrations were rendered unnecessary by Christ’s direct word of healing to the crippled man. Nonetheless and notwithstanding the danger of letting angelology spin out of control without any anchorage in Tradition, the role of Angels remains a central part of our Christian faith and life. This is perhaps easiest to see in the figure of St Raphael who reminds us that the healing of God often takes place through the agency of both humans and angels alike. Sometimes in our culture nurses are called angels.  This can just be a sentimental reference, but in a deeper more spiritual sense, it may sometimes be objectively true. There are numerous references in the Scriptures and the Tradition of the Church to people in great need encountering angels, often unrecognised and   unawares.  With this in mind, the intercession of Saint Raphael can only help to bring more people to the throne of God for healing, mercy, protection and peace.

If St Raphael brings healing, Archangel Uriel brings light. His name means in Hebrew: “God is my light.” In the second book of Esdras (4, 5:1-14), St Uriel instructs Ezra concerning the limitation of human minds when trying to comprehend God’s ways. Ezra is thereby enlightened in understanding the difference between what we can know and what remains hidden. Indeed St Uriel, at the end of a sequence of parables explaining these matters, himself declares that there are things proper to God alone that he does not know. Therefore, the only light that Uriel can bring is from God himself, as his name indicates.  We might reflect why it is that many believers cannot be content, or even to rejoice in the words of the prophet Isaiah:

‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,’ says the Lord. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.’  (Isaiah 55:8-9).

This reluctance to let God be God can only bring darkness and confusion to the human mind. Paradoxically it is only when we, like Socrates, confess our true ignorance that we can really begin to discover and know divine and ineffable things revealed by God according to our capacity to receive them, and even then we may not be able to speak coherently of the light that we have received. The Apostle St Paul cautions us in like manner:-

For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.  (1 Corinthians 13:9-12)

St Uriel points us towards the Light that enlightens every man coming into the world, even Christ himself (John 1:9).  His cautionary tales about our relative ignorance, unaided by divine grace, alerts us to what we might otherwise miss either through overconfidence in our own insights or through the limitations of our own reasoning.  We seek his intercession so that we might be better instructed and enlightened in the things of God.

Our little tour through two of the lesser well known Archangels has revealed some gems of insight concerning the brilliance of God in both healing power and enlightenment of mind.  Angels were created by God to serve him and in particular, in their primary roles as messengers and guardians, to guide and protect humanity.  Let us not neglect to honour them and listen to their wise counsels as they bring us closer to Christ whose advent at Christmas they rejoiced to see; disclosing even to poor illiterate shepherds the glory of God - both their and our eternal joy.