Saint Rafka – Hemlaya

Rafka Pietra Choboq Ar-Rayès (1832–1914) was a Lebanese Maronite nun who bore blindness, paralysis and constant pain for almost thirty years, offering her suffering for the Church. She was the first woman of the modern Maronite Church to be raised to the altars.

1. 1832

   Birth and baptism

   Boutrossieh — the feminine form of “Peter” — was born on 29 June 1832 in Hemlaya, in the North Matn highlands of Mount Lebanon, the only child of Mourad Saber el-Choboq el-Rayès and Rafka Gemayel. She was baptised on 7 July 1832 in the church of Mar Gerges (Saint George) in the village.

2. c. 1839

   An orphan on the hill

   The death of her mother when she is about seven leaves her an only child alone with her father. She grows up among the rocks, oaks and wildflowers of the hill above Hemlaya, where she spends long hours in prayer.

3. 1843–1847

   Service in Damascus

   Hardship obliges her father to send her, aged about eleven, into domestic service in Damascus, in the household of Assaad al-Badawi. She returns to Hemlaya four years later, in 1847.

4. c. 1859

   The convent of Bikfaya

   Wishing to give herself wholly to God, she enters the Convent of Our Lady of Deliverance in Bikfaya and joins the Congregation of the Mariamettes (Daughters of Mary). Its founder calls her “the lily of Hemlaya”.

5. 1861–1871

   Habit, vows and service

   She receives the religious habit on 19 March 1861 and makes her first vows the following year. She works in the kitchen of the Jesuit seminary of Ghazir, teaches catechism in Deir el-Qamar — sheltering a child during the events of 1860 — and helps run a girls’ school in Byblos and Maad.

6. 1871–1872

   The Lebanese Maronite Order

   When her congregation is dissolved, she is guided to the Lebanese Maronite Order. On 12 July 1871 she enters the Monastery of Saint Simon el-Qarn in Aitou; she makes her perpetual vows on 25 August 1872 and takes her late mother’s name, Rafka.

7. 1885

   Sharing the Passion

   In October 1885, at prayer, she asks to share something of Christ’s suffering. A violent pain seizes her head and right eye. When treatment fails, an American physician removes the eye without anaesthesia; she repeats only, “In union with your Passion, O Jesus.”

8. 1897

   Monastery of Saint Joseph, Jrabta

   She is transferred to the Monastery of Saint Joseph al-Dahr in Jrabta, in the Batroun district, where she will live her last seventeen years.

9. 1899–1914

   Blindness and paralysis

   By 1899 she is completely blind. Paralysis follows, with a dislocated shoulder and hip that leave her bedridden — yet her hands still knit, and she never ceases to give thanks.

10. 1914

    A holy death

    Saint Rafka dies on 23 March 1914, Ash Monday, after receiving Communion, murmuring: “Jesus, Mary, Joseph — I give you my heart, my being and my soul.” Her relics are placed in the monastery chapel on 10 July 1927.

11. 1985 & 2001

    Beatification and canonisation

    Declared Venerable in 1982, she is beatified by Pope John Paul II on 17 November 1985 and canonised in Saint Peter’s, Rome, on 10 June 2001, proposed as a model of the adoration of the Eucharist. Her feast is kept on 23 March.

“With you, O Jesus.” This was her answer to every pain, through twenty-nine years of blindness and sickness.

Saint Rafka is invoked by the sick and by those who have lost their parents. She offered her long night of pain for the Church and for Lebanon.

I remember nothing of my childhood in my village of Hemlaya but that wonderful hill, where I spent hours praying and contemplating the beauty God had made, looking out over the Valley of the Cross and Mount Sannine. There I felt Jesus with me, beside me, speaking to me; he was my mother and my father, and I a small orphan. My home was the rugged rocks, the oaks and the flowers. There I asked for the heart of Jesus; there I made my decision and traced my path for him.

Words of Saint Rafka in the last hours of her life, March 1914.

The hill is the little house that Saint Rafka built in her heart after she was orphaned — the place to which she withdrew to pray. Today its path is marked by a series of stations.

1. 1

   The Raised Cross

   On the highest rocks of the hill hangs the Crucified, overlooking the whole site, a sign of the pain that Saint Rafka bore. It is among the largest wooden crosses in the world.

2. 2

   The Last Hour

   At the Monastery of Saint Joseph in Jrabta, Mother Ursula asked Saint Rafka to tell her story before she died. Rafka raised her hand, remembered the hill, and said: “Here I traced my path.”

3. 3

   Grotto of Our Lady of Deliverance

   It recalls the death of her mother when she was a child, and the hand of Our Lady of Deliverance, who became her second mother. A great rock bears the image of Our Lady, and a trickle of water flows from it — a sign of a mother’s giving.

4. 4

   The Apparition of Jesus

   Among the rocks a statue of the Heart of Jesus meets a statue of a small girl, “Boutrossieh” — what Saint Rafka felt on the hill. The words read: “On earth as it is in heaven.”

5. 5

   The Icon Chapel

   A small chapel with walls of natural rock, an altar surmounted by the icon of Saint Rafka, and three windows looking out over the valley of the River of the Cross.

   Here I traced my path on the awe-filled hill,
   here I wrote my life for Jesus my beloved,
   from beyond the heights, in his hand and mine,
   from Mount Sannine to the Valley of the Cross.

6. 6

   The Way of the Cross

   A stairway marking the stations of the Way of the Cross. At the summit stands the cross, and beneath it a small cave where Saint Rafka would shelter from the winter. Above its entrance is written: “For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory.”

7. 7

   The Spring of Love

   A column of water rising from the earth toward the sky, a sign of giving and of goodness, in a view that gathers Mount Sannine, the valley of the River of the Cross and the whole hill of Saint Rafka.

You can be a friend of the hill: care for it, protect its environment, plant and tend it. It is a trust from Saint Rafka — a place where a small girl decided to sow a message of love, sacrifice and faith across the whole earth.

The hill in pictures

• The raised wooden cross on the hill, with the statue of Saint Rafka and Mount Sannine under snow.
• Bronze statue of Saint Rafka on its hexagonal plinth, on a winter day above Hemlaya.
• The icon of Saint Rafka above the altar of the rock chapel.
• Inside the rock chapel on the hill, built between the natural boulders.

Feasts and anniversaries at Hemlaya

• 23 March Feast of Saint Rafka
• 23 April Feast of Saint George
• 10 June Anniversary of the canonisation
• 29 June Birth of Saint Rafka
• 7 July Anniversary of her baptism
• 20 July Feast of Saint Elias
• 25 August Anniversary of her perpetual vows
• 17 November Anniversary of the beatification