Saint Rafqa (1832-1914)

Birth in the Maronite mountains

Boutrossieh Choboq Ar-Rayès was born on June 29, 1832 in Himlaya, a village of the Metn caza, in the Lebanese mountains then part of the Ottoman Empire.^[6][7] She was the only child of Mourad Choboq Ar-Rayès and Rafqa Gemayel, a devout peasant family of the Maronite community.^[8][9] Baptized on July 7, 1832, she received the name Boutrossieh — the Arabic feminine form of Peter —, the feast of Saints Peter and Paul falling on the very day of her birth, June 29.^[10]

Her mother died when she was only seven years old, in 1839.^[11][12] During her stay in Damascus, her father remarried: on her return in 1847, the child discovered the authority of a stepmother whom several biographers describe as harsh toward her.^[13]

Domestic service in Damascus (1843–1847)

In 1843, financial hardship led Boutrossieh’s father to send her into domestic service in Damascus, with a wealthy Maronite family, that of Assaad Al-Badawi.^[14][15] She spent nearly four years there, far from her native village, before returning to Himlaya in 1847 — only to discover that her father had remarried in the meantime.^[16] This episode, experienced at an age when other children remain with their families, lastingly gave her an early experience of insecurity and imposed obedience, two traits that would recur throughout her religious life.

Refusing arranged marriages and entering religion

On her return, the young girl came up against the customs of mid-19th-century Mount Lebanon in the form of marriage plans arranged by her family: her stepmother wanted to marry her to her own brother, while a maternal aunt pushed for a union with a cousin.^[17] Faced with this double pressure, Boutrossieh sought light in prayer and decided, without consulting her family, to go to the convent of Our Lady of Deliverance in Bikfaya, where she asked to be admitted as a postulant.^[18][19]

Her name appears among the very first candidates accepted, in January 1853, for the young institute of the Daughters of Mary Immaculate — the future Mariamettes —, when she was twenty-one years old.^[20] Nominis dates this entry into religion to 1847, just after Damascus; the gap with the 1853 date most likely reflects the distinction between the young girl’s informal arrival at the convent of Bikfaya and her formal enrollment, a few years later, among the first candidates of the nascent institute, which at that date still had no structured novitiate.^[21][22]

A young teaching congregation founded by Father Gemayel

The institute Boutrossieh joined had been founded by the Maronite priest Joseph Gemayel, who from the 1840s onward organized a congregation of nuns devoted to the instruction of girls in the villages of Mount Lebanon — a field then almost untouched by Catholic girls’ schools.^[23] The first candidates, including Boutrossieh, are recorded in the founder’s notebook under the date of January 1853.^[24] The congregation took the popular name of Mariamettes (“little Marys”), after its Marian title of the Daughters of Mary Immaculate.

Boutrossieh received the religious habit on March 19, 1861 and pronounced her first vows on March 19, 1862, at the age of thirty — an exceptionally long novitiate by later standards, revealing the institutional youth of the congregation at that time.^[25][26]

Witness to the 1860 massacres at Deir el-Qamar

Even before her profession, in 1860, the young postulant was sent as reinforcement to the region of Deir el-Qamar, then ravaged by the confessional clashes that set Mount Lebanon and Damascus ablaze that year — one of the deadliest episodes of the 19th-century Levant, whose historical estimates place the Christian death toll between 10,000 and 20,000 depending on the sources, with several hundred villages and churches destroyed.^[27] According to biographical tradition, Boutrossieh hid a child under her religious habit to shield him from the violence.^[28] This episode, handed down by the biographical tradition of the order, concretely places the future saint’s entry into religion within the most dramatic context of the Christian history of Ottoman Lebanon.

“In union with the Passion of Christ.” — a formula Sister Rafqa would repeat tirelessly during her years of suffering, and which already sums up the spirit in which, as a young nun, she lived through the violence of 1860^[29]

Cook, weaver and teacher between Ghazir, Byblos and Maad

Once professed, Sister Boutrossieh served successively as cook at the major seminary of Ghazir for seven years, then as a worker in a spinning mill at Sarba, before teaching catechism and basic schooling at Byblos and then at Maad.^[30][31] There she learned literary Arabic, calligraphy and elementary mathematics, equipping her to provide basic teaching to village girls.^[32]

1871: the dissolution of the Mariamettes and the choice of the cloister

In 1871, the institute of the Mariamettes was absorbed into a new congregation, the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, leaving each nun the choice of joining the new teaching foundation, changing congregation, or returning to secular life.^[33] Sister Boutrossieh, then aged thirty-nine, chose a third path which the merger had not explicitly provided for: the cloistered life, rather than the active teaching life for which she had been trained. According to the tradition preserved by the Lebanese Maronite Order, she received confirmation of this choice in a dream through the intercession of Saint Anthony the Abbot, Saint George and a Baladite monk showing her the way of the cloister.^[34]

An order born in 1695 in the holy valley

The Lebanese Maronite Order, known as the Baladite Order (from the Arabic baladiyah, “of the country,” as opposed to monks originating from Aleppo), was born on November 10, 1695 when four young Maronites of Aleppo — Gebrayel Hawwa, Abdallah Qaraali, Youssef Al-Bitin and Gebrayel Farhat — received the monastic habit from the hands of the Maronite Patriarch Estephan Douaihy (1670–1704), at the monastery of Mar Elicha in the Qadisha valley.^[35] Pope Clement XII confirmed the monastic rule on March 31, 1732, making the order a congregation of pontifical right; in 1770, a split definitively separated the Baladites, who remained in Lebanon, from the so-called Aleppine branch (today the Maronite Mariamite Order), sanctioned by Pope Clement XIV.^[36] It was into this Baladite branch, then nearly two centuries old, that Sister Boutrossieh requested admission in 1871 — the same religious family to which Saint Charbel Makhlouf, her elder by four years (1828–1898), already belonged.^[37]

Perpetual profession under the name of Rafqa (1873)

On July 12, 1871, at the age of thirty-nine, Boutrossieh entered the novitiate of the Lebanese Maronite Order, at the monastery of Saint Simeon in Aïto.^[38][39] On August 25, 1873, she pronounced her perpetual vows of poverty, chastity and obedience according to the strict rule of the order and received a new name in religion: Rafqa (Rebecca), in homage to the first name of her late mother.^[40][41]

A hard life between prayer and manual labor

Set at altitude, the monastery of Saint Simeon in Aïto imposed a rigorous rhythm of liturgical prayer and manual labor: vegetable gardening, silkworm rearing, spinning wool and making liturgical vestments kept the nuns busy between offices.^[42] Sister Rafqa remained there for twenty-six years, from 1871 to 1897, leading a silent monastic life in which nothing, in the early years, hinted at the trial to come.

Rosary Sunday 1885

On the first Sunday of October 1885 — Rosary Sunday —, Sister Rafqa, who had never known illness since entering religion, went to the monastery church and addressed to the Lord a prayer reported in these terms by the tradition of the order:

“Lord, why do You neglect me? Do You forget me? I am Your slave.” — Sister Rafqa, prayer of Rosary Sunday 1885, as preserved by the tradition of the Lebanese Maronite Order^[43]

In it she explicitly asked to share, in her own flesh, in the redemptive Passion of Christ, so as to obtain the salvation of souls.^[44][45] From the following night, she was seized by a violent pain spreading from her head to her eyes: this was the beginning of a physical trial that would never leave her until her death, twenty-nine years later.^[46][47]

The operation without anesthesia and the loss of both eyes

The medical examinations carried out in Tripoli remained inconclusive.^[48] An American doctor recommended removing the affected right eye; the operation, performed without anesthesia in line with the common surgical practice of the time in rural Lebanon, resulted in the accidental loss of the eye.^[49][50] In the months that followed, the left eye, painful in its turn, gradually went out: Sister Rafqa was completely blind by 1899.^[51][52]

Despite her blindness, she kept spinning wool and cotton, knitting stockings and joining in the choral chant of the offices, letting her sisters guide her in the gestures she could no longer perform alone.^[53] The following table summarizes the main stages of her physical decline between 1885 and her death.

A lived theology of suffering offered up

Sister Rafqa’s spirituality belongs to the Catholic tradition of the “victim soul”: like Saint Paul writing that he completes “in his flesh what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ” for the Church (Col 1:24), she first received a trial she had not sought for herself — blindness and illness were not voluntary mortifications as with some ascetic mystics, but real evils, undesired in their detail, which she turned into a free offering after having asked for them in principle. This distinction is decisive for understanding her holiness as recognized by the Church: it is not suffering in itself that Rome canonizes, but the supernatural patience with which she bore it for nearly thirty years.

The transfer of 1897

In 1897, the Lebanese Maronite Order completed the construction of a new monastery at Jrabta, in the district of Batroun, consecrated on November 3, 1897 under the patronage of Saint Joseph al-Dahr.^[54][55] Sister Rafqa, already blind, was among the six nuns sent from Saint Simeon in Aïto under the leadership of Mother Superior Ursula Doumit to found this new community.^[56][57]

Bone tuberculosis and the progressive dislocation of her body

From the late 1890s onward, a progressive bone tuberculosis was added to her blindness: her right collarbone, hip and then leg gradually dislocated, her vertebrae became visible beneath her thinned skin, and Sister Rafqa remained bedridden, paralyzed, in suffering which witnesses of the time described as continual.^[58][59] She nevertheless kept knitting socks from her bed and taking part, as far as possible, in the community’s common prayer.^[60]

Far from complaining, she repeated to those who came to visit her the formula that sums up her entire spirituality:

“In union with the Passion of Christ.” — Sister Rafqa, words constantly repeated during her last years of suffering^[61]

The last prayer and the death of March 23, 1914

According to the tradition gathered by her sisters, shortly before her death Sister Rafqa asked the Lord to grant her one hour of sight before leaving this world — a prayer which, the biographers report, was granted.^[62] On March 23, 1914, four minutes after receiving the last sacraments and the plenary indulgence, she died at the Monastery of Saint Joseph in Jrabta, at the age of eighty-one, after nearly thirty years of almost continuous illness.^[63][64]

The first miracles reported (March 1914)

In the days following her death, Sister Rafqa’s reputation for holiness spread through healings attributed to earth taken from her tomb. On March 26 or 27, 1914 — three days after her death —, Mother Superior Ursula Doumit, who had suffered for several years from a throat tumor, ingested a little of this earth and found herself, according to the account preserved by the community, healed instantly.^[65][66] The same day, a village girl, Madeleine Farraane, dying of typhoid fever for eight days, reportedly recovered her health after drinking water mixed with that same earth.^[67] These accounts, handed down by the annals of the monastery and the hagiographical biographies of the order rather than by a contemporary canonical inquiry into the facts, belong to the register of pious tradition; they nonetheless document the immediate birth, from 1914 onward, of a popular devotion centered on the tomb of Jrabta.

A cause shared with Charbel Makhlouf and Nimatullah Al-Hardini

The diocesan process for Sister Rafqa’s beatification opened in 1925, and her cause was accepted in Rome in 1927, jointly with those of two other great figures of the Lebanese Maronite Order: the monk and priest Charbel Makhlouf (1828–1898), and Father Nimatullah Kassab Al-Hardini (1808–1858), Charbel’s former teacher at the monastery of Kfifane.^[68] The three causes, introduced together, would progress at very different paces over nearly half a century, as the following table shows.

See the article devoted to Saint Charbel Makhlouf for the details of this shared cause and of the history of the Lebanese Maronite Order itself at the turn of the 20th century.

Venerable, then the beatification of 1985

On February 11, 1982, John Paul II recognized the heroicity of the virtues of Sister Rafqa, who became Venerable.^[69][70] On June 9, 1984, a pontifical decree recognized as miraculous the healing of Élisabeth Ennakl, of Tourza (northern Lebanon), suffering from advanced cancer of the uterus and healed in 1938: hospitalized for four months with no improvement, she went to the tomb of Jrabta and observed, according to the preserved account, that her hemorrhages stopped the very next day, before a complete recovery that left her with thirty more years of life.^[71][72] On the basis of this miracle, John Paul II beatified Rafqa on November 17, 1985.^[73][74]

The canonization miracle: the healing of Céline Rebeiz

The miracle retained for the canonization concerns a Lebanese girl, Céline (Sami) Rebeiz, aged two, suffering from a malignant kidney tumor that required the surgical removal of the organ — a tumorous mass of about 750 grams according to the available hagiographical sources.^[76] As a further operation was being considered, her family applied earth taken from Sister Rafqa’s tomb; the child was declared healed on November 23, 1985, six days after the nun’s beatification.^[77] After several years of medical inquiry by a commission of the Holy See, the decree recognizing this miracle was promulgated on July 1, 2000, opening the way to canonization.^[78] The detailed accounts of this miracle come from hagiographical sources and Catholic popularization rather than from the original medical documentation of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints; the child’s exact diagnosis varies slightly from one source to another (a kidney tumor according to most accounts, sometimes reported more vaguely as a “terminal cancer”). The canonical recognition of the miracle by Rome, for its part, is formal: the decree of July 1, 2000.^[79]

June 10, 2001: the canonization in Rome

On June 10, 2001, on the solemnity of the Holy Trinity, Pope John Paul II canonized Sister Rafqa in Saint Peter’s Square, together with four other blesseds: Luigi Scrosoppi, Agostino Roscelli, Bernard of Corleone and Teresa Eustochio Verzeri.^[80] In his homily, the pope dwelt at length on the new Lebanese saint:

“In the sufferings which never left her for 29 years of her life, St Rafqa always showed a passionate and generous love for the salvation of her brothers.” — John Paul II, canonization homily, June 10, 2001^[81]

The pope added, presenting the acceptance of suffering as the authentic path of holiness lived by the Maronite nun:

“Living in close union with Jesus, she was capable, like him, of never giving up on a human being.” — John Paul II, canonization homily, June 10, 2001^[82]

The next day, in an address to the Lebanese pilgrims gathered for the occasion, the pope stressed the significance of this canonization for a country then marked by decades of war and reconstruction:

“May St Rafqa watch over those who know suffering, particularly over the peoples of the Middle East.” — John Paul II, address to the pilgrims, June 11, 2001^[83]

The shrine of Jrabta today

The tomb of Saint Rafqa, at the Monastery of Saint Joseph al-Dahr in Jrabta, in the district of Batroun, has become one of the most frequented pilgrimage sites of Christian Lebanon.^[84] The nuns of the Lebanese Maronite Order still perpetuate there today the contemplative and manual way of life — prayer, weaving, making liturgical vestments, cultivating olive, fig and vine — which was Sister Rafqa’s own during her last seventeen years.^[85] For the architectural history and the present organization of this shrine, readers are referred to the article that may be devoted specifically to it.

An intercession for Lebanon and the Middle East

Recognized by the universal Church as the first Lebanese woman to be canonized (Lebanon’s first woman saint)^[86], Rafqa Ar-Rayès holds, alongside Saint Charbel Makhlouf and Saint Nimatullah Al-Hardini, a particular place in the religious identity of contemporary Lebanon: three figures of the Lebanese Maronite Order, canonized a few decades apart, whose causes were introduced together in Rome in 1927 in a country then under French mandate, and whose completion stretches, for the last of them, to 2004.^[87] John Paul II, in his 2001 homily, explicitly presented her canonization as a cause of “deep joy for the Church and for Lebanese Christians,” in a country then in full reconstruction after fifteen years of civil war.^[88]

Patroness of the sick and of afflicted parents

Popular devotion today makes Saint Rafqa the patroness of the sick, of blind or paralyzed persons, and — on account of her orphaned childhood — of parents and children separated by trial.^[89] Her liturgical feast, set on March 23, the anniversary of her death, is celebrated each year at the shrine of Jrabta by crowds of pilgrims from all over Lebanon and the Lebanese diaspora.

A holiness with no outward splendor

Saint Rafqa founded no work, left no systematic theological writing, and never left, in almost half a century of religious life, the two monasteries of the Lebanese Maronite Order that were her home. Her holiness, recognized by Rome in 2001, lies entirely in the silent fidelity of a blind and paralyzed nun who made of her own flesh, freely offered after having first been endured, the very place of her communion with the suffering Christ — a witness which John Paul II presents as “a source of confidence for those who are being tried.”^[90]

• Saint Charbel Makhlouf (1828–1898) — monk of the same Lebanese Maronite Order, whose cause for beatification was introduced in Rome jointly with that of Saint Rafqa in 1927.
• Saint John Paul II (1920–2005) — the pope who declared Rafqa Venerable in 1982, beatified her in 1985 and canonized her in 2001.
• Saint Alphonsa of the Immaculate Conception (1910–1946) — another 20th-century nun whose life was entirely marked by illness offered in union with the Passion of Christ.
• Saint Gemma Galgani (1878–1903) — contemporary Italian mystic, whose life was likewise crossed by intense physical suffering freely offered.