A short Latin prayer to Raphael as physician of soul and body and companion of the road, from a Catholic prayer book of 1901.
O caelestis medice et comes fidelissime, sancte Raphael, qui Tobiae seniori visum restituisti, iuniorem per omnes suscepti itineris vias deduxisti et incolumem conservasti: esto corporis et animae meae medicus, pelle ignorantiae tenebras, mihique in periculosa huius vitae peregrinatione constanter assiste, donec me ad caelestem patriam perducas. Amen.
O heavenly physician and most faithful companion, St. Raphael, who didst restore sight to the elder Tobit, and didst lead the younger Tobias along all the ways of the journey he had undertaken and keep him safe: be the physician of my body and of my soul, drive away the darkness of ignorance, and stand by me constantly in the dangerous pilgrimage of this life, until thou bring me to the heavenly homeland. Amen. (Our translation.)
In sickness; before travel; on the feast of the archangels.
The Book of Tobit gives Raphael two faces: the physician who heals blindness and the companion who walks the whole road and brings the traveller home. This prayer names both — medice et comes, physician and companion — and asks for both: healing for body and soul, and company on 'the dangerous journey of this life' as far as the heavenly homeland.
The Latin is printed in the Orate Fratres, a Latin prayer book of 1901, as the Thesaurus Precum Latinarum records it. The English below is our own translation from that Latin.
