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Last year, i briefly wrote about St. Raphael’s feast day falling on the 24th of October…that is today.

Yes, inspite of milenyo’s aftermath and still out of electric power, for the past nine nights, the residents (the devout catholics at least!) of Brgy. Payawin, Gubat, Sorsogon (my birthplace) has been religiously attending the novena and procession that culminated with a concelebrated mass this morning.

Señor San Raphael, as we fondly call him is one of God’s archangels.

In his mortal life, he was a fisherman that was able to miraculously heal a sick child named Tobias using fish-bile.

Thereby in sainthood he is particularly known as the healer of the sick and companion to the traveller.

That explains why an image of St. Raphael is always one with a fish hook and fish and sometimes with the young child Tobias.

Legend has it too that on the dawn of his feast day there always is a light rainshower that stops before sunrise, because that’s the kind of weather he loves best to go fishing.

Like it did exactly this morning!!

In this photo is the image in our barrio’s small church.

Laom mi Raphael na kaherakan an samong mga kaipuhan…

(We hope Raphael that you will be merciful to our needs…)

The prayer couldn’t be more timely as now!

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 24th, 2006 at 1:47 pm and is filed under Bicol, Travel Oddities. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.