The Archangel of Prayer

Selaphiel is venerated in the Eastern Orthodox Synaxis of the Bodiless Powers as the angel of prayer and intercession. His name is read as "prayer of God" or "the one who prays to God," and in iconography he is shown with his face and eyes turned downward and his hands crossed on his breast in the posture of worship, the very attitude of humble supplication that he is held to inspire and to carry upward.

Where Michael leads the heavenly armies and Gabriel bears revelation, Selaphiel's office is directed at the interior life of the faithful: he prompts and assists the prayers of the Church and presents them before God. He appears in no canonical scripture and is not among the widely known Western seven; his cult is chiefly an Eastern Christian one, developed within the Orthodox tradition's naming of seven principal archangels, each with a distinct ministry. He is the patron of those who struggle to pray, the archangel of the raised heart.