Category Archives: Icons

SS. Raphael, Gabriel, and the Trumpet

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Statues of the four archangels at the Church of the Transfiguration (“Little Church Around the Corner”) in New York City: Uriel holds the book, Gabriel the lily, Michael the sword, and Raphael the fish. Read the history of the Little Church here.

The Archangel Raphael is said to be the angel always ready to blow the trumpet to announce the General Resurrection and the End of Time, according to Islam. Christians, on the other hand, expect the Archangel Gabriel to be the one who will blow the trumpet on the Last Day to announce the General Resurrection and Judgement.

For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

(1 Thess. 4:16)

A statue of Gabriel, often depicted with the lily which is associated with the Mother of God (because he brought the Good News of the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin), is frequently found atop the roof at the east end of churches already blowing the trumpet. It is always Gabriel’s job to announce; he is the “announcer” of God.

We are told in the Old Testament to blow a trumpet to celebrate the New Year (Leviticus 23:24) or to announce a fast (Joel 2:15). Trumpets announce the coming of God as king and call the people to get ready to greet him. In the New Testament, trumpets announce the arrival of God’s judgement and call the people to turn their lives around (“repent”) in order to face the coming judgement. That is why Gabriel blows the trumpet atop a church: to announce the End that comes during the celebration of the Eucharist on the altar below the statue’s feet.

The most famous trumpets in the Bible are the seven trumpets blown in the Book of Revelation (Rev. 8-11). Angels blow the first six trumpets to call sinners on Earth to repentance. Each trumpet blast brings a plague, each one more disastrous than the one before it. The trumpet is used to build anticipation and tells the reader that an alert, announcement, or warning is about to take place. The seventh trumpet does not bring a plague with it. Instead, an angel blows the seventh trumpet to announce the glory of God and the coming of his kingdom.

How did Raphael get associated with the trumpet in Islam? Islamic folklore says that Raphael was the first of the archangels to be created and that he visited Mohammed even before the archangel Gabriel came to reveal the Qur’an. The Islamic folktales also say that Raphael is a master of music, who sings praises to God in a thousand different languages. It is probably this association with music that results in Raphael being given the honor of blowing the trumpet.

We never read explicitly in the New Testament that Gabriel is the archangel that will blow the trumpet on Judgement Day. I think we have come to expect him to do this precisely because he is God’s “announcer,” who announced the meaning of Daniel’s visions to the prophet (Daniel 8-9) and the birth of John the Baptist to his father Zachary as well as the birth of Christ to the Mother of God. So we expect him to announce the End of Time and the General Resurrection as well.

But the association of Gabriel with the trumpet can only be dated with certainty to the 1300s: the earliest known identification of Gabriel as the trumpeter comes in John Wycliffe’s 1382 tract, De Ecclesiæ Dominio. In the year 1455, there is an illustration in an Armenian manuscript showing Gabriel sounding his trumpet as the dead climb out of their graves. Two centuries later, Gabriel is identified as the trumpeter, in John Milton‘s Paradise Lost (1667).

St. Raphael & the Fish-incense

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Archangels Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael, identified by their names (above) and images of what they are each known best for: greeting the Mother of God (Gabriel), defeating Satan (Michael), and the fish that saved Tobias and his father (Raphael).

In the Old Testament, Tobit falls asleep in a garden and goes blind because the birds drop excrement on his eyes. Meanwhile, in faraway Media, a young woman named Sarah has prayed for death in despair. The demon Asmodeus (“the worst of demons”), abducts and kills every man Sarah marries on their wedding night before the marriage can be consummated. God sends the angel Raphael, disguised as a human, to heal Tobit and free Sarah from the demon.

Tobit sends his son Tobias to collect money that the elder has deposited in distant Media. Raphael presents himself as Tobit’s kinsman, Azariah, and offers to aid and protect Tobias. Under Raphael’s guidance, Tobias journeys to Media with his dog.

Along the way, while washing his feet in the river, a fish tries to swallow Tobias’ foot. By the angel’s order, he captures it and removes its heart, liver and gall bladder.

Upon arriving in Media, Raphael tells Tobias of the beautiful Sarah. The angel instructs the young man to burn the fish’s liver and heart to drive away the demon when he attacks on the wedding night. Tobias and Sarah marry, and the fumes of the burning organs drive the demon to Egypt, where Raphael follows and binds him. Since the wedding feast prevents him from leaving, Tobias sends Raphael to recover his father’s money.

After the feast, Tobias and Sarah return to Nineveh. There, Raphael tells the youth to use the fish’s gall to cure his father’s blindness. Raphael then reveals his identity and returns to heaven, and Tobit sings a hymn of praise.

We are accustomed to very short parables in the Gospels. Most are only a few sentences long; the longest–the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son–are a few paragraphs. The Book of Tobit is an extended parable that makes the point that God cares for his people and protects them in many ways. The fish is a good example.

Centuries before it was common to use a cross or crucifix, Christians often used a fish as a symbol of Christ and to indicate a Christian gathering place; the word “fish” in Greek is ichthys which is made of the initial letters of the words “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.” The ichthys symbol is also a reference to the Holy Eucharist, which was associated with the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. Christians interpreted the fish in this story of Tobit and Tobias as an allusion to Christ who saves the world from Death by his own death and resurrection.

Tobias takes the organs of the fish that are most full of blood and burns them as incense to drive away the demon. This illustrates the use of incense as an important tool in exorcisms because demons cannot stand the fragrance of incense. Blood is an allusion to both life and death; the bloody organs–liver and heart–are those associated with emotional and spiritual life, as well as physical life and death in the Ancient World. The power of Life–the power of God–made manifest in Christ’s death and resurrection drives the demon Asmodeus away.

The fish’s gall that heals Tobit’s eyes is also interpreted as an allusion to Christ, the light of the world, who heals the blind man in the Gospel of John (chapter 9). The blood of the fish (i.e. the blood of Christ) brings health (a variation of the Greek word “salvation”) to Tobit, Tobias, and Sarah–and to the world.

Gideon, the Dewy Fleece, & St. Mary Major

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This Byzantine image is another depiction of Gideon and the miracle of the angel meant to reassure Gideon that he was chosen to save Israel from their enemies. There are many more icons of this event here.
This contemporary Greek image depicts Gideon and the commander of the heavenly armies on the left; on the right is the Mother of God enthroned with Christ. Read more here.

I recently wrote about St. Mary Major and the miracle of the snow in Rome. I realized this morning how similar the story about St. Mary Major is to the story of Gideon and the miracle of the fleece in the Old Testament.

In the book of Judges (chapter 6), we read that Gideon was told by an angel that he would save the people of Israel from their enemies as they were settling the Promised Land after wandering in the desert for 40 years after the Exodus. But Gideon wants reassurance that God would fulfil this promise that he would lead the people to victory. He tells the angel,

“If now I have found favor in your eyes, then show me a sign that it is you who speak with me. Please do not depart from here until I come to you and bring out my present and set it before you.” And the angel said, “I will stay till you return.”

So Gideon went into his house and prepared a young goat and unleavened cakes from an ephah of flour. The meat he put in a basket, and the broth he put in a pot, and brought them to him under the terebinth and presented them. And the angel of God said to him, “Take the meat and the unleavened cakes, and put them on this rock, and pour the broth over them.” And he did so. Then the angel of the Lord reached out the tip of the staff that was in his hand and touched the meat and the unleavened cakes. And fire sprang up from the rock and consumed the meat and the unleavened cakes. And the angel of the Lord vanished from his sight. Then Gideon perceived that he was the angel of the Lord. And Gideon said, “Alas, O Lord God! For now I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face.” But the Lord said to him, “Peace be to you. Do not fear; you shall not die.”

After Gideon wins a series of battles, the enemies of Israel gather large reinforcements and Gideon calls for more Israelites to join him. While he is hoping the Israelites will respond to his call and come to join him, we are told that

… Gideon said to God, “If you will save Israel by my hand, as you have said, behold, I am laying a fleece of wool on the threshing floor. If there is dew on the fleece alone, and it is dry on all the ground, then I shall know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you have said.” And it was so. When he rose early next morning and squeezed the fleece, he wrung enough dew from the fleece to fill a bowl with water. Then Gideon said to God, “Let not your anger burn against me; let me speak just once more. Please let me test just once more with the fleece. Please let it be dry on the fleece only, and on all the ground let there be dew.” And God did so that night; and it was dry on the fleece only, and on all the ground there was dew.

Christian preachers always associated both the miracle of the sacrifice consumed by fire and the miracle of the fleece with the Incarnation of the Word of God in the womb of the Virgin Mary. St. Ambrose of Milan preached, “as soon as the Angel touched them with the end of the staff which he bore, fire burst forth out of the rock, and so the sacrifice which he was offering was consumed. By which it seems clear that that rock was a figure of the Body of Christ, for it is written: “They drank of that rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ.” (1 Cor. 10:4)

Other early Christian writers, such as St. Proclus of Constantinople describe the Blessed Virgin as the “loom” of the incarnation and linked the miracle of the fleece with Mary: “The holy Mary has called us together, that undefiled treasure of virginity… the most pure fleece with heavenly dew, from which the Shepherd clothed the sheep… She is the awe-inspiring loom of the incarnation.”

The dew on the fleece that announces God’s choice of Gideon is remarkably similar to the snowfall that announces God’s choice of the building site for the church of St. Mary Major in Rome. Both miracles announce to the world what God has previously revealed to only a few people and both miracles are associated with the Mother of God whose consent made the incarnation possible.