Saint Rafael Arnáiz Barón

Saint Rafael Arnáiz Barón was a Spanish architecture student who gave up his studies to enter the Trappist monastery of San Isidro de Dueñas. A severe form of diabetes forced him several times to return home, and each time he went back to the monastery. He died at the age of 27 as an oblate. His memorial falls on April 26.

He was born on April 9, 1911, in Burgos, into a wealthy and deeply believing family, the eldest of four children. He attended Jesuit colleges, first in Burgos and, after his family moved, in Oviedo. As a child he had to interrupt his schooling because of persistent fevers; when he recovered, his father, in thanksgiving to the Blessed Virgin, took him to Zaragoza and consecrated him to Our Lady of the Pillar. Rafael was cheerful and sociable; he played sports, drew and painted, and loved music and the theater.

While studying architecture in Madrid, he prayed for a long time each day before the Blessed Sacrament and took part in Nocturnal Adoration. His uncle and aunt, the Duke and Duchess of Maqueda, introduced him to the Trappist monastery of San Isidro de Dueñas, whose prayerful atmosphere won him over. In December 1933 he broke off his studies, and on January 16, 1934, he entered that monastery as Brother María Rafael.

After the first months of his novitiate and an austere Lent, he suddenly fell ill with a severe form of diabetes and had to return to his parents for treatment. Three times the illness forced him to leave the monastery, and three times he returned; the last of these returns fell during the Spanish Civil War. The canon law of the time did not allow someone so seriously ill to take religious vows, so he lived in the monastery as an oblate, in the last place in the community. He wrote of himself that he was neither a religious nor a layman, but only a soul in love with Christ.

His spirituality is summed up in the cry he often repeated in his writings: “¡Sólo Dios!” (“God alone!”). He lived in close friendship with Jesus in the Eucharist and with Mary, whom he simply called “the Lady.” He wrote many letters to his mother, who after his death gathered them into a book. Benedict XVI recalled one of his last prayers: “Tómame a mí y date Tú al mundo” (“Take me to yourself and give yourself to the world”).

He died at dawn on April 26, 1938, in the monastery infirmary, after a final attack of the illness. He was buried in the monastery cemetery, and his remains were later moved to the abbey church. The fame of his holiness soon spread beyond the monastery walls, and his grave became a place of pilgrimage.

On August 19, 1989, during World Youth Day in Santiago de Compostela, John Paul II held him up to young people as a model, and on September 27, 1992, in Rome he declared him blessed. Benedict XVI canonized him on October 11, 2009, presenting him to all the faithful, and especially to the young, as a friend, an example and an intercessor. He was one of the patrons of World Youth Day in Madrid in 2011.