ABSTRACT
“Ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good” (Gen. 50:20a): these words, spoken by the Righteous Joseph the All-Comely to describe the wonder of God’s providence in his own life, can also be used in reference to the life of St Raphael Hawaweeny. Becoming a refugee while still in his mother’s womb was just the beginning of his meanderings through the exotic Levant, the vastness of the Russian Empire, across Europe and the Atlantic until he finally reached Brooklyn, New York. In the divine providence Raphael found himself enmeshed in a series of adverse circumstance which men meant to him for evil, but which, obviously, “God meant unto good.”
