Friday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time

Votive Collect of Holy Angels

Lectionary: 357

Then Tobit went back in, rejoicing and praising God with full voice 
for everything that had happened.

We'll come to the end of the Book of Tobit tomorrow but we do well to reflect on the above verse. Despite his heroic virtue, Tobit had suffered much at the hands of state sponsored terror, from his blindness, and from the consequences of his anguish. They included his unjustly scolding his wife and her equally unkind response. He had sunk into a fit of depression before his despairing prayer reached the Lord. 

As the story unfolded we also learned of Sarah, the innocent maiden who had survived the death of several husbands before she married Tobiah. Her prayers also had apparently gone unheard and unanswered until she too cried in anguish. 

These sad circumstances were happily resolved when the Lord sent the Archangel Raphael. But the divine messenger still needed the obedient fidelity of several people to work out the miracle. The distant "Gabael, the son of Gabri, at Rages in Media" had to hand over ten talents of silver to Tobiah, while Raguel gave him his daughter Sarah. Tobiah had to return home with the money, his bride, and the fish. Sarah, also, despite the bizarre death of her several husbands, could not commit suicide. In other words, despite the evil government, the network of Jewish kin had to keep the faith. 

For the blessings of God's fidelity and the people's, Tobit would rejoice and praise God with full voice for everything that had happened. That "everything" included the nasty bird and his painful blindness. 

When tragedies strike faithful people assure themselves that, "God has a plan through all this." They know that God owes neither explanation nor apology for the trouble they have suffered. There are many long moments and difficult situations in our life when we cannot imagine how good might come of this. 

Anyone who can read can be immersed to the point of drowning in other people's sorrows. Sometimes they go so far as to pronounce judgement on God for tragedies they only hear about in the evening news, before they settle again into their sitcoms and police dramas. They assume and exploit the grief of strangers for their own idle purposes. 

Fidelity waits upon God through the darkness; it believes in God's mercy and justice when cynicism would say like Job's wife, “Are you still holding to your innocence? Curse God and die!”

Fidelity thanks God for everything that has happened even before it has been resolved with a happy ending.