St. Raphael Kalinowski, OCD (1835-1907)

St. Raphael of St. Joseph, OCD (Joseph Kalinowski) was born into a Noble Catholic
family to Polish Parents, Andrew Kalinowski and Josephine Polonska on September
01, 1835 in Vilna, Lithaunia. His mother died, a few months after his birth and his
father married Josephine’s Sister, Victoria. Joseph grew up in a warm and affectionate
Christian home. After the death of Victoria, his father married again and it was his
father’s third wife who played a pivotal role in his faith formation and academic
excellence.
Joseph attended the Institute for Nobles at Vilna and graduated with honours in 1850
specialising in Mathematics, Science and Engineering. Since the opportunities for
further education were limited, Joseph joined the Imperial Russian Army and served
as an Associate Professor of Mathematics and later as an engineer, helped in the
designing of the Kursk-Kiev-Odessa railway. As he worked on the road, he had many
hours of silence and solitude and he began to realise the need of interior life. It was
during this time that the call of the Lord began to penetrate Joseph’s heart.
In 1860, he left the Russian Army to support the Polish Revolution and was appointed
Minister of War. He was soon imprisoned and was condemned to 10 years of forced
labour in Siberia. While a prisoner himself, Joseph proved to be a person of
extraordinary compassion and charity to his fellow prisoners by nursing and nurturing
them in their illness and sharing with them his food. He instilled in them a spirit of
prayer, serenity and hope. He practised deep silent prayer and understood the deep
spiritual fact that in order to be filled with God’s grace, one needs to be emptied of all
that hinders our relationship with God.
After his release from the prison at the age of 39, he accepted the post of a tutor to
Polish Prince August Franciszek, who later became a devout Salesian Priest and was
beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2004. While tutoring the young Prince, Kalinowski
met a young Carmelite nun, who gave him a book on the spirituality of St. Teresa of
Avila and St. John of the Cross. While reading this book, he discovered his new found
love for Carmelite Spirituality and devotion to our Lady, Mother of Carmel. He was
convinced that God was calling him to be a Carmelite.
Joseph entered the Carmelite Order in Linz in 1877 at the age of 42 where he was
given the religious name Raphael of St. Joseph on his investiture. He was ordained a
priest in 1882. As a devout Carmelite, he spent his life in Carmel as a preacher, an
administrator, a confessor and spiritual Director. Driven by his sanctity and
compassion, people flocked to him for confessions. He was ever ready to hear
confessions and his confessional were the places of numerous conversions. As a
dedicated confessor, Fr. Raphael was found in the cold damp confessionals so often
that he was called, ‘the martyr of the confessional’.

A great devotee of Mother of God, he considered Mary, the Queen of Poland as the
visible sign of the action of the Holy Spirit in souls who yearn to do God’s will. He
contributed greatly to the restoration of the Discalced Carmelites in Poland. Inspired
by his holiness and piety, his contemporaries described him as a ‘living prayer’.
St. Raphel believed that he was chosen to walk the path of Christ, a path of
compassion and readiness to fight against evil practises and injustice. After spending
his earthly life fruitfully, he gave his soul to God at the age of 72 on November 15,
1907 at Wadowice. He was beatified in Cracow on June 22, 1983 and Canonised in
Rome on November 17, 1991 by Pope John Paul II.
Living in a world where one is persistently driven to be successful, it is hard to live a
life of faithfulness as willed by God. For many of us, saints are people with
exceptional virtues and qualities. In fact, they are ordinary human beings with due
strengths and weaknesses moving towards a life of holiness. Each of us is called to be
a saint and to be a saint, we need not strive to do what other saints did, but rather try to
become the unique self that God wishes us to be. St. Raphael strived and became what
God wished him to become. He progressed slowly on the road to sainthood, drifting
away from the faith as a youth and struggling with doubts and hesitations during his
gradual conversions. Kalinowski was a brilliant and well-connected person. He could
have been a great statesman, scientist, railway engineer, math professor, or a scholar
but with all his achievements, his heart was restless until it found rest in the Lord. He
became a Model of Holiness, Living Prayer and a Martyr of Confessional. It is
better to lay aside our plans and follow the plans of God instead because He knows
what is best for us.