Condensing
Jun 8: Thursday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time
This week, we’ve been reading Tobit, which necessarily means condensing the story, despite it being a moderately short book. Still, the lectionary skips over some interesting bits, which I’ll try and cover.
Jesus, meanwhile, condenses the whole law into just two, easy to remember commands.
Reading 1
Tb 6:10-11; 7:1bcde, 9-17; 8:4-9a
When the angel Raphael and Tobiah had entered Media and were getting close to Ecbatana, Raphael said to the boy, "Tobiah, my brother!"
He replied: "Here I am!"
He said: "Tonight we must stay with Raguel, who is a relative of yours. He has a daughter named Sarah."
So he brought him to the house of Raguel, whom they found seated by his courtyard gate. They greeted him first. He said to them, "Greetings to you too, brothers! Good health to you, and welcome!" And he brought them into his home.
Raguel slaughtered a ram from the flock and gave them a cordial reception. When they had bathed and reclined to eat, Tobiah said to Raphael, "Brother Azariah, ask Raguel to let me marry my kinswoman Sarah."
Raguel overheard the words; so he said to the boy: "Eat and drink and be merry tonight, for no man is more entitled to marry my daughter Sarah than you, brother. Besides, not even I have the right to give her to anyone but you, because you are my closest relative. But I will explain the situation to you very frankly. I have given her in marriage to seven men, all of whom were kinsmen of ours, and all died on the very night they approached her. But now, son, eat and drink. I am sure the Lord will look after you both."
Tobiah answered, "I will eat or drink nothing until you set aside what belongs to me."
Raguel said to him: "I will do it. She is yours according to the decree of the Book of Moses. Your marriage to her has been decided in heaven! Take your kinswoman; from now on you are her love, and she is your beloved. She is yours today and ever after. And tonight, son, may the Lord of heaven prosper you both. May he grant you mercy and peace."
Then Raguel called his daughter Sarah, and she came to him. He took her by the hand and gave her to Tobiah with the words: "Take her according to the law. According to the decree written in the Book of Moses she is your wife. Take her and bring her back safely to your father. And may the God of heaven grant both of you peace and prosperity."
Raguel then called Sarah's mother and told her to bring a scroll, so that he might draw up a marriage contract stating that he gave Sarah to Tobiah as his wife according to the decree of the Mosaic law. Her mother brought the scroll, and Raguel drew up the contract, to which they affixed their seals.
Afterward they began to eat and drink. Later Raguel called his wife Edna and said, "My love, prepare the other bedroom and bring the girl there." She went and made the bed in the room, as she was told, and brought the girl there. After she had cried over her, she wiped away the tears and said: "Be brave, my daughter. May the Lord grant you joy in place of your grief. Courage, my daughter." Then she left.
When the girl's parents left the bedroom and closed the door behind them, Tobiah arose from bed and said to his wife, "My love, get up. Let us pray and beg our Lord to have mercy on us and to grant us deliverance." She got up, and they started to pray
and beg that deliverance might be theirs. And they began to say:
"Blessed are you, O God of our fathers, praised be your name forever and ever. Let the heavens and all your creation praise you forever. You made Adam and you gave him his wife Eve to be his help and support; and from these two the human race descended. You said, 'It is not good for the man to be alone; let us make him a partner like himself.' Now, Lord, you know that I take this wife of mine not because of lust, but for a noble purpose. Call down your mercy on me and on her, and allow us to live together to a happy old age."
They said together, "Amen, amen," and went to bed for the night.
We’re getting kind of a Reader’s Digest Condensed Books version of Tobias’s story. Just before this passage, Raphael1 took Tobias to the Tigris river, told him to catch a fish by hand, then cut out its gall, heart, and liver.
Then on the wedding night (in another passage we skipped),2 Tobias burns the fish guts in the incense burner. Legend had it that demons hate the smell of cooking fish guts, so the demon Asmodeus, who had killed Sarah’s seven previous husbands on their respective wedding nights, fled into the desert!
But demons are spirit, invisible. Tobias and Sarah don’t actually know any of this happened. So, rather than doing wedding night stuff…
…Tobias and Sarah pray. Both in thanksgiving, and in request to be protected. They don’t know that God has already protected them, which is usually how it works, anyway, since God knows what we’re going to ask for before we ask.
We can follow that model, when we make a prayer request, to include praise and thanksgiving, knowing God is already working for our betterment.
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 128:1-2, 3, 4-5
R. Blessed are those who fear the Lord.
Blessed are you who fear the LORD,
who walk in his ways!
For you shall eat the fruit of your handiwork;
Blessed shall you be, and favored.
R. Blessed are those who fear the Lord.
Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine
in the recesses of your home;
Your children like olive plants
around your table.
R. Blessed are those who fear the Lord.
Behold, thus is the man blessed
who fears the LORD.
The LORD bless you from Zion:
may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem
all the days of your life.
R. Blessed are those who fear the Lord.
“Fear the Lord” is one of those phrases that sounds weird to modern ears. It doesn’t mean you should be afraid of God the way you’re afraid of, say, a bear or a tornado. It’s what we call “filial” fear, because it like the fear of a child who is afraid to hurt the feelings of their father because of their mutual love. It’s different from “servile” fear, which is based on punishment, like the fear of a slave for his master.
There are lots of laws and commands in the Bible, and it may be difficult to even remember them all. So, we might be afraid of violating something without even knowing it!
Luckily, in today’s Gospel, Jesus gives us an easy way to remember them.
Alleluia
See 2 Tm 1:10
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Our Savior Jesus Christ has destroyed death
and brought life to light through the Gospel.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
The widow Sarah was sure Tobias would be killed, like the rest of her husbands, but God saved him. We are all equally sure that we’ll die someday, and while that’s true, it won’t be as permanent as once thought.
Gospel
Mk 12:28-34
One of the scribes came to Jesus and asked him, "Which is the first of all the commandments?"
Jesus replied, "The first is this: Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these."
The scribe said to him, "Well said, teacher. You are right in saying, He is One and there is no other than he. And to love him with all your heart, with all your understanding, with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices."
And when Jesus saw that he answered with understanding, he said to him, "You are not far from the Kingdom of God." And no one dared to ask him any more questions.
Today’s scribe was among the group who gave Jesus the hypothetical about the seven wives yesterday. Like that question, this question is one rabbis debated amongst themselves regularly.
In Matthew’s version,3 wants to “test” Jesus; he’s not asking an honest question, but once again trying to trick him. For a devout Jew, all the commandments were to be kept with equal care. So, how do you chose one?
Jesus goes beyond, and offers two: one pertaining to God, the other to our fellow man. If you use these as your guiding principles, you can’t really go wrong, Jesus assures us.
Even Jesus’ debate opponent is impressed.
And the happy ending to this story is, Jesus is impressed that he’s impressed. The scribe obviously came to cause trouble, but he sincerely listened to Jesus, and hearing His words, allowed his heart to be changed.
Obviously, we should learn the lesson Jesus taught us, but we should also remember what the scribe taught us, too.
Sometimes “Azariah,” for reasons that aren’t clear to me.