ST. RAPHAEL OF ST. JOSEPH (Joseph Kalinowski) was born to Polish parents in Vilna, Lithuania in 1835. He attended the university in Vilna, where, for a time, he fell away from the practice of his faith. He was a military engineer in the Polish army and took part in the uprising against Russia in 1863. Captured by the Russians in 1864 and condemned to ten years of forced labor in Siberia, he proved himself to be a person of extraordinary compassion and charity for his fellow prisoners by caring for them in their illness and giving them his meager portions of food.

Released when he was 39, he taught school in Vilna, then became a tutor to the Polish prince, August Czartoryski, in Paris. August was later to renounce a diplomatic career in order to follow his vocation to the priesthood. The young prince, whom Raphael cared for, and to whom he offered encouragement and spiritual guidance, was to become a very holy Salesian priest and was himself beatified in 1927.

St. Raphael entered the Carmelite Order in Linz in 1877 at the age of 42. He was ordained a priest in 1882 and, shortly after, was elected prior of Czerna. His contemporaries described him as “a living prayer.”

For the next twenty-five years in Carmel, he was a preacher, an administrator, a confessor, and spiritual director. When hearing confessions, he was like a father to his penitents, addressing them as “my child” or “my dear child.” For him, the Sacrament of Confession was a “treasury of divine mercy.” At every request, he was ready to hear confessions, and his confessionals were places of numerous conversions.

Renowned for his sanctity and his heroic status in Poland due to his years in Siberia, Raphael greatly popularized the Order and is credited with bringing about its restoration in Poland. He was distinguished in his zeal for the advancement of the Church, his efforts toward Church unity, and, in particular, his love of Our Lady, Queen of Poland. For him, devotion to Mary was the yardstick of progress in the way of perfection. She was the visible sign of the action of the Holy Spirit in souls and participated, in a particular way, in the process of their sanctification. He died in Wadovice in 1902 at age 72 and was canonized by St. John Paul II in 1991. His feast is observed on November 19.