Tobit: Prayers for Death . . . and Birth
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Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 22, 2024
God hears the pleas of two desperate people in two distant places, and he sends his special messenger Raphael to guide Tobiah in the healing of Sarah and Tobit. Tobiah is first the faithful son and later the courageous and abiding spouse. Sarah sees no reason for her existence based on a series of marriages that fail because a demon has become enamored of her. She becomes separate from everyone in her intense and desperate grief. Tobit, a good main who is faithful to his Jewish beliefs, has also become separate his blindness. Yearning for the light, he seeks death rather than continue in the darkness. He, like Sarah, feels alone; they both search for the reason that God has visited punishment upon them when they know themselves to be innocent of doing wrong. They stand judged by others because Old Testament thinking saw misfortune as a punishment for sin. Some of us may from time to time feel like this man and woman.
Yesterday in chapter three, we read that Tobit and Sarah’s desperation has reached such depths that each, in distant privacy, prays for release from this world. As they pray for death, their prayers rise to God intertwining like spirals of incense. God hears these petitions and sends Raphael to accompany the faithful Tobiah in his journey to knit together these wounded souls. God intervenes when we sometimes least expect it . . . and in very surprising and confounding ways.
The journey that Tobiah takes is a long and complicated one. Yet he accepts his father’s request, finds a traveling companion (Raphael in disguise) and perseveres faithfully without fully understanding how his actions will result in anything good. He continues, he obeys, he listens for and answers the call. This is how we must live. It is how we must act. This is how we find consolation and healing. It is how we encounter God. This is how we become wounded healers. This is God’s plan.
So after reflection with the story of Tobit, we pray.
Sometimes we must reach the point of desperation in order to know what we truly hold sacred . . . and that we are sacred healers.
Sometimes we must fall into the abyss in order to find God’s abiding presence . . . and our own divinity.
Sometimes we must cry out from our aloneness in order to understand that true and deep hope is also bold and outrageous . . . and that God’s best hope lies in us.
Sometimes we must be victim to our darkest fears in order to lay aside our anxieties . . . for then we see them as prison bars that separate us from God.
Sometimes we must be blind in order to see.
Sometimes we must feel unloved in order to be loved and to love truly and deeply.
Sometimes we must reach the point of desperation in order to know what we truly hold sacred. And in that spot, in that distant place that is actually dep within, we will find our consolation, our birth in Christ. Amen.
For a beautiful rendition of Angels We Have Heard on High, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5mdybeyLVc
Adapted from a reflection written during Advent 2007. Tomorrow, on Christmas Day, the Messiah arrives.
Images from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:El_arc%C3%A1ngel_San_Rafael,_de_Juan_de_Vald%C3%A9s_Leal_(Palacio_de_Viana_de_C%C3%B3rdoba).jpg and https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rembrandt_De_aartsengel_verlaat_Tobias_en_zijn_gezin._1637.jpg
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