Repose (1915)

After a final illness, St. Raphael reposed in Brooklyn in the early hours of 27 February 1915, at about fifty-five years of age, having built the American Arab Orthodox Church from a scattered people into a diocese. He died as he had wished — among his American flock, who mourned him deeply — and his repose is kept as his principal feast.

Tradition: Antiochian Orthodox (Arab-American diaspora)

The Final Illness

Raphael’s tireless labor exacted its cost. Late in 1912 he was diagnosed with a heart ailment, but he did not spare himself, continuing his pastoral visitations through 1913 and 1914 as his strength allowed (Orthodox Church in America, “Repose of Saint Raphael, Bishop of Brooklyn,” Lives of the Saints, oca.org). In the early part of 1915 he fell seriously ill and spent his last weeks at home in Brooklyn, cared for as his condition declined over some two months (OCA, “Repose of Saint Raphael,” oca.org). The shepherd who had crossed a continent for his sheep came at last to his rest in the city that was the center of his mission, in the shadow of St. Nicholas, the church he had built.

The Death

St. Raphael reposed in Brooklyn in the early hours of 27 February 1915 — the Life gives the hour as about 12:40 a.m. — at approximately fifty-five years of age (OCA, “Repose of Saint Raphael,” oca.org). His death is dated in some sources as “14/27 February 1915,” the double form reflecting the Julian (Old Style) and Gregorian (New Style) calendars: 14 February by the Church’s Julian reckoning, 27 February by the civil calendar (OCA, “Repose of Saint Raphael,” oca.org). The Church keeps his memory on 27 February, which is accordingly observed as the anniversary of his repose and one of his feasts (OCA, “Repose of Saint Raphael,” oca.org; on the feasts see Veneration in North America).

[Disputed: the Old Style / New Style form of the repose date. The OCA Life gives the date as 14/27 February 1915, i.e. 14 February by the Julian calendar the Russian mission used liturgically and 27 February by the civil Gregorian calendar; the Church commemorates him on 27 February (OCA, “Repose of Saint Raphael,” oca.org). The single date “27 February 1915” is the standard commemoration; the “14 February” form is the corresponding Old-Style date, not a different day.]

The Diocese He Left

Raphael died at the height of his work and left behind not a struggling mission but an established Church. The Syro-Arab diocese numbered by then some thirty parishes and on the order of twenty-five thousand faithful across North America, with clergy, churches, a cemetery, service books, and the magazine The Word — the whole apparatus of a settled ecclesial life where twenty years before there had been a single chapel and a scattering of unshepherded families (OCA, “Repose of Saint Raphael,” oca.org; see Good Shepherd of the Lost Sheep). His achievement was, in the plainest terms, the creation of the American Arab Orthodox Church. That this Church was robust enough to survive the fragmentation soon to come, and to grow into the present Antiochian Archdiocese, is the measure of how well he had built (see The Fragmentation after 1917; Legacy).

The Mourning of a People

The grief at Raphael’s death was that of a people for a father. He had baptized, married, and buried them across a continent; he had given them their churches, their priests, their books, and their magazine; and he had refused honorable escape to higher sees again and again in order to stay with them (see Head of the Syro-Arab Mission). The devotional tradition records the depth of the mourning that attended his repose and burial as the fitting response of a flock to the shepherd who had not fled (OCA, “Repose of Saint Raphael,” oca.org; Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, The Life of Our Father among the Saints Raphael Hawaweeny). He was buried among his people; his remains would later be translated to the cemetery of the Antiochian Village in Ligonier, Pennsylvania, where they rest today (see Glorification 2000).

A Death Before the Division

There is a providential poignancy in the timing of Raphael’s death that the tradition and the historians both notice. He reposed in February 1915, and the Russian Revolution that would shatter the unity of the American Church came in 1917 — so that Raphael died two years before the fragmentation, a bishop of the still-undivided Church (see The Russian Mission and the Many Nationalities). He never saw the division of the Church he had served, nor the division of his own Syro-Arab community that soon followed. He belongs wholly to the age of unity, and this is precisely what would make his memory, in the decades of division, the natural emblem of the wholeness that was lost — a saint of the one American Church, revered by all the jurisdictions that emerged from it (see The Fragmentation after 1917; Assessment). His death, that is, closed his life exactly at the hinge of American Orthodox history, and gave the Church a shepherd to look back to when it longed for unity.

See Also

• The Fragmentation after 1917 — the division that followed his death
• Good Shepherd of the Lost Sheep — the diocese and pastorate he left
• Glorification 2000 — the resting place of his relics and his glorification
• Veneration in North America — his feast of 27 February
• St. Tikhon of Moscow — his consecrator, who returned to Russia to become patriarch and confessor

References

• Orthodox Church in America. “Repose of Saint Raphael, Bishop of Brooklyn.” Lives of the Saints. oca.org. (The heart ailment diagnosed late in 1912; the continued visitations of 1913–1914; the final illness of about two months; the repose in Brooklyn on 14/27 February 1915, at about 12:40 a.m., aged about 55; the commemoration on 27 February; the state of the diocese at his death; the mourning of his people.)
• Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America. The Life of Our Father among the Saints Raphael Hawaweeny. (The mourning at his repose and the memory of his pastorate.)