Wow, 200 days! It has been a great 200 days learning about the saints.
Today we have Saint Rafqa who was born on June 20, 1832 in Lebanon with the name of Boutrossieh Ar-Rayes. She was the only child of her parents. Her mother died when she was only six years old. She and her step-mother did not get a long and worked as a maid from ages 11 to 15. When she was 14 she told her father that she felt she had a call to religious life. He objected, but at age 21 she became a nun in the Marian Order of the Immaculate Conception in Bikfaya and took the name Anissa (Agnes). She made her final vows in 1856.
In 1871 her Order and the Order of the Sacred Heart of Jesus merged. The sisters were given the choice of joining the new combined order, joining others, or be released from their vows. Following a dream from Saint Anthony the Great appeared to her, she joined the Lebanese Order of Saint Anthony of the Maronites on July 12, 1871. She was a novice at age 39 and took the new name of Rafqa (Rebecca).
On the feast of the Holy Rosary in 1885, she prayed that she might share Christ's sufferings. Soon her health began to deteriorate and soon she was blind and crippled. She spent as much time as she could in prayer and wanted to work in the convent, usually by spinning wool and knitting. By 1907 she was completely blind and paralyzed. In 1981 during the canonization process, specialists in ophthalmology, neurology, and orthopedics diagnosed the most likely cause as tuberculosis with ocular localization and multiple bony excrescences. The pain was unbearable, but she was thankful for the communion that she had with Christ.
Toward the end of her life, close friend, Mother Superior Ursula Doumit, ordered her to dictate her autobiography, and of course Rafqua complied. Near the time of her death, she prayed that her sight be restored for one hour so she might see Mother Ursula again; it happened.
She died on March 23, 1914 at the convent of Saint Joseph Grabta in Lebanon. Four days after her death, miraculous cures were recorded at her grave, and the first was to Mother Ursula whose throat was closing. The miracle for her beatification was to Elizabeth En-Nakhel from Tourza, Lebanon who was cured from uterine cancer in 1938. She was canonized on June 10, 2001 by Pope John Paul II.
She is the patron against bodily ills and sickness; loss of parents; and sick people.
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