Mystic · Modern
St. Rafqa
1832–1914 · Maronite redemptive suffering
Rafqa Pietra Choboq Ar-Rayès; Lebanese Maronite nun; canonized 2001.
A Lebanese Maronite nun who asked God to share Christ's Passion and spent her last thirty years blind, paralyzed and in constant pain, in unbroken thanksgiving and joy. Her dictated memoir to her superior is one of the simplest accounts of co-redemptive suffering in Catholic literature.
Why he matters: A patron of the sick and a witness that the Maronite Church shares fully in the Catholic theology of suffering united to the Cross; with Charbel and Hardini she forms the modern Maronite constellation of saints.
Reading
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The Autobiography (dictated to Mother Ursula Doumit)St. Rafqa · Her own short account of her life and sufferings.
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Rafqa: The Blind Mystic of LebanonFr. Paul Daher · A biography from the Lebanese Maronite Order.
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Salvifici DolorisSt. John Paul II, 1984 · The theology of suffering she lived.
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each dispute the test covers.