Patron saint of eyes

Few fears go as deep as the fear of losing one's sight. Christ met it again and again in the Gospels: Bartimaeus calling out by the road at Jericho, the man born blind washing in the pool of Siloam. The saints who are patrons of the eyes carry that same hope. Each of their stories is about light given back.

St. Lucy, the patron saint of eyes

St. Lucy was a young Christian woman of Syracuse in Sicily who died a martyr around 304, in the persecution of Diocletian. Her name is the Latin Lucia, from lux, light, and that name shaped nearly everything later Christians did with her.

Her ancient Acts say nothing about her eyes. The stories came later, in the Middle Ages: that her eyes were torn out before her death, or that she plucked them out herself and sent them to a suitor who admired them, and that God gave her new and more beautiful eyes. These stories are traditional, and late. But together with her name they made her the saint people turn to when their sight fails, and painters began to show her holding two eyes on a dish, the way other martyrs hold the instrument of their death.

Dante, who once wrote that he had read so much his eyes weakened and the stars looked blurred, made Lucy a messenger of grace in the Divine Comedy. Catholics with failing eyes have asked her prayers for centuries, and healings of the eyes through her intercession are reported in many places, though none has been formally examined. Her feast is December 13.

St. Odile, born blind

The second great patron of the eyes is less known in America but beloved in France and Germany. St. Odile (also Odilia or Ottilia) was the daughter of Adalric, a Frankish duke of Alsace, and she died around 720. She founded the convent of Hohenburg on a mountain in the Vosges that now bears her name, Mont Sainte-Odile, and the convent's lands were confirmed by Louis the Pious in 837. That much is history.

Her life, written down in the tenth century, tells the rest. Odile was born blind, and her father, ashamed, wanted the child gone. Her mother sent her away to be raised by nuns. When she was still a girl, the Irish missionary bishop St. Erhard, moved by an inspiration from God, came to baptize her. As the chrism touched her eyes, she saw. The Catholic Encyclopedia records the older form of the story: Erhard "was recalled to the Rhineland to baptize St. Odilia, blind from her birth, but who received her eyesight at her baptism." The healing is traditional, kept by a life written some two centuries after her death.

The baptismal name fit the miracle. Odile is often explained as "light of God," and Lucy's name means light too; the two saints even share a feast day, December 13. In art Odile wears an abbess's habit and holds a book with two eyes resting on it.

Pope Pius XII proclaimed her patroness of Alsace in 1946, a year after the war ended, and pilgrims still climb her mountain. On the path below the convent is a spring that tradition links to Odile, and visitors bathe their eyes in its water and pray. Odile's tomb lies in a chapel beside the convent church.

St. Raphael and the healing of Tobit

The one patron of the eyes whose story comes from Scripture is St. Raphael the Archangel. In the Book of Tobit, the old man Tobit, a just Israelite in exile, is blinded when bird droppings fall into his eyes as he sleeps against a wall. He sends his son Tobias on a long journey, and the angel Raphael, in human form, goes with him. On the way Tobias catches a great fish, and Raphael tells him to keep its gall.

When they reach home, Raphael tells Tobias: "anoint his eyes with this gall of the fish, which thou carriest with thee. For be assured that his eyes shall be presently opened, and thy father shall see the light of heaven." The Douay-Rheims tells what happened next:

Then Tobias taking of the gall of the fish, anointed his father's eyes. And he stayed about half an hour: and a white skin began to come out of his eyes, like the skin of an egg. And Tobias took hold of it, and drew it from his eyes, and immediately he recovered his sight. (Tobit 11:13-15)

Raphael's name means "God heals," and for this story the Church invokes him for the sick, for travelers and for physicians.

Other saints invoked for the eyes

• St. Clare of Assisi: her name, Clara, means clear or bright, and Franciscan tradition invokes her for diseases of the eyes. She is also the patron of television.
• St. Longinus: the Roman soldier who pierced Christ's side. A traditional story says his weak eyes were healed when the blood and water touched them, and the blind invoke him.

The full list is on our patron saints page.

A prayer for the eyes

There is no ancient prayer to St. Lucy for the eyes; the prayers on holy cards are modern. The oldest prayer of thanks for restored sight is Tobit's own, spoken the moment he saw his son again (Tobit 11:17, Douay-Rheims):

I bless thee, O Lord God of Israel, because thou hast chastised me, and thou hast saved me: and behold I see Tobias my son.

Before an eye appointment or surgery, we can pray that same trust in our own words, then ask the saints of light to pray with us: St. Lucy, St. Odile and St. Raphael, pray for us, and for all who are losing their sight. More prayers to the archangel are on our St. Raphael prayer page, and the patron of the sick in general is on our patron saint of healing page.