Johanna Koelsch was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on August 29, 1892, to Henry Koelsch and Emma Dumbeck—both German-born. Several of the family’s twelve children died in infancy, but Johanna had the companionship of four brothers and three sisters while growing up in northside St.Louis. She lost her Mother, who succumbed to a heart attack in October 1903, and an older sister, "Liz", eighteen, then a postulant in the Notre Dame community at Ripa, was called home to care for the younger children.

Sister M.Bernard Willmann and Sr. M.Bonaventure Eikelmann were in St. Louis in 1910 seeking new subscriptions to Clyde’s magazine, "Tabernacle and Purgatory." They stopped at the Koelsch home, and one of the boys took a subscription. A year later, Johanna wrote to Mother M. John asking to enter the convent at Clyde. A letter of acceptance was sent, but Liz, not wanting to lose Johanna's help with the housework, hid it. Eventually Johanna found the letter, and with her father’s blessing entered as a postulant October 6, 1911. Three months later, January 13, 1912, she received the religious habit, and the following year on January 18, 1913 made her profession of poverty, chastity, obedience, stability and conversion of life. Given the name of Raphael, she rejoiced in the patronage of an archangel.

During formation years Sister M. Raphael was assigned to the kitchen and bakery, and did some sewing with M.M. John’s supervision. On business in 1912, a Sister from Clyde stopped at Sr. M. Raphael's home. Admiring some beautiful needlework, she learned it had been done by Sr.  M.Raphael. Her talents were tried out in the Vestment embroidery after first profession, Sr. M. Stephania Clausen teaching her raised stitching. But she spent the years from 1915 to 1920 at the Orphanage in Conception. Here she taught the girls sewing, mended their clothes, waited on table, supervised picnics and outings, and even found time to plant potatoes, corn and other garden vegetables.

In February 1921, the industrial school and laundry burned down, and on March 5, 1921 Sister M. Raphael made her perpetual vows. After another period in the vestment embroidery work, Mother Dolorosa Mergen gave her charge of making and caring for the Sisters’ veils. She took care of the veils with the utmost perfection for thirty-two years. 

Whenever an order came for robes for the statue of the Infant Jesus of Prague - a devotion very popular in the United States after Clyde printed the booklet about the Holy Infant in 1932, Sr. M. Raphael was asked to make the dress and mantle; or the sets with white, red, green, and gold colored robes and mantles, all richly embroidered, as was often desired. Sister M. Rachel delighted in this labor of love and made forty or more sets in the course of years. Sister had a special love for the Infant Jesus since she was two years old. Her sister, Elizabeth, then twelve, took Johanna to church to visit the Christmas crib. While her sister said a prayer and put some money in a slot, Johanna reached for the "Baby Jesus", and holding Him in her arms, saying "I want Jesus," they went down the eight stone steps when the sacristan appeared, and took the image away. Johanna kept crying all the way home, "I want Baby Jesus!" For many years she cared for the shrine of the Infant of Prague in the Sorrowful Mother chapel at Clyde, always changing robes for special feasts, adorning the shrine with a special cloth she had made of drawn work, putting flowers and candles there according to the solemnity of the feast. She continued to do the same in St. Louis for a number of years.

Sr. M.Raphael also found time to make corporals, altar linens, and other accessories while working with the veils. The beautiful altar cloths made for the Clyde and Mundelein chapels were of drawn work, scalloped with tatting on the edge. She invited each Sister at Clyde to put in a few stitches in the drawn work of these. Many of the skills Sr.M. Raphael possessed were self- taught, as she never gave up till she mastered the art.

In the early years of her retirement Sister learned to paint by following a numbered pattern, and she developed some talents in this area in water colors and textile painting. At age 85, she received a certificate for the successful completion of thirty-four lessons in a correspondence course on the Bible.

Sr. M. Raphael came to St. Louis when the infirmary patients at Clyde were transferred, November 30, 1975. She kept active in her second floor room, making beautiful afghans, stoles, tablecloths, bed spreads in crochet work, and also agnus deis, as she had always done for a hobby. She also took care of her own room. It was her custom to take an early morning walk on the black-topped pavement praying her rosary.

Sister was near her 93rd birthday (August 1985) when she died on April 17, 1985. She had been professed seventy-two years: a long life of love, adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, and labors and sufferings for the glory of God.