A Beautiful Mercy
You do not have because you do not ask...
Have you ever wanted something so badly that you could beg for it? Maybe you think of those Christmas items you desired as a child, bringing it up to your parents constantly in a youthful naiveté to subtly.1
It can be even funnier to reflect on such things when, in the end, we got something different from that which we begged for yet ended up liking more. I wonder what pops into your head when I bring that type of situation up?
For me it's the fact that I'm getting married this year.
Muddled-Up Missions
When I first became Catholic, I remember taking some time out to read the book of Tobit for the first time.2 It was striking in many different ways. Noticeably in the fact that the main protagonist of the story is actually Tobit's son, Tobias.
Tobias was on a mission, but not quite the one he had planned.
I like that about Tobias, though. He's on a mission, and a very noble one at that. Yet instead of completing his task he's given something better than he could have hoped for.
Similarly, around the same time I was reading Tobit, I had my own mission in mind.
I was in Scotland, as I have written about previously, on a formation and mission year and afterwards I was hopeful to discern religious life after a proper period of study and prayer.
It's a good goal, but my reasons behind it weren't as pure. Over the last couple years before my conversion I had become hurt, by a mix of choice and circumstance, and had written myself off in a romantic sense.
Simply put I had given up, and was acting from a place of dejection. But back to Tobit.
Tobit and Sarah's Shared Request
In the third chapter of Tobit, before Tobias has set out on his mission, things aren't looking great. Tobit has become blind and can't make a living to support his family. He gives up, feeling a burden and a failure, and asks God to die.
Across the nation in Media, someone else was asking to die at pretty much the same time as Tobit. Sarah, daughter of Raguel, had been married seven times.
Every time, on the night of the wedding, a demonic entity that harassed her would inevitably cause the death of her husband. People were starting to get suspicious, pointing the finger, and Sarah was the one on the other end.
She gave up, name disgraced and accused of serial homicide, and also asks God to die.
And God hasn't gone deaf to their shared request.
A Response to Restore
What follows the petitions of both Sarah and Tobit is possibly one of the most beautiful passages in all the Old Testament:
At that very moment, the prayer of both was heard in the presence of the glory of God. And Raphael was sent to heal the two of them: in regard to Tobit, to remove the white film from his eyes that he might see the glory of God with his eyes; with regard to Sarah...to give her as wife to Tobias son of Tobit and to send Asmodeus the evil demon away from her...
— Tobit 3:16-17a3
I don't know about you, but that level of mercy is striking. When two people had given up on life completely, God heard their cry and sent for their lives to be restored.
Speaking of restoration, as summer was approaching and my time in Scotland drawing to a close, I had went through a bit of it myself. I wasn't all there yet, but I was a lot better. Interior healing takes it's time, and you have to be willing to be vulnerable for it to work.
But God is patient with us, and he had brought me a long way out of my dejection. I decided to give the whole dating idea, "one last go."
Media & Marriage Prep
Of course interior healing is great theoretically, but living it out is where the work really begins.
So when Tobit remembers that this guy called Raguel owes him a bit of money that the family needs, he sends Tobias out toward Media to pick it up.
Along the way Tobias is divinely intercepted by the archangel Raphael, who guides him to what he needs to solve both his father's and his future bride's conundrums. I'll leave the more detailed aspects of the story for your own reading. It's worth a study.
Now, my Dad is no archangel.4 That said, he's also got some good advice and guidance to give from time to time. So with a bit of a blunt encouragement and fatherly wisdom, he helped equip me for my own journey to imminently getting married. I've got to give him some credit for that.
In both cases, heeding some good advice went a long way.
Tobias was able to cure his father's blindness and expel his wife's tormentor, and I was able to give myself enough of a chance to meet someone who's changed my life for the better in so many ways.
The penultimate chapter of the book5 sees a healed Tobit praising God and encouraging others to cry out to him:
Turn back, you sinners, and do what is right before him; Who knows if he will accept you and have mercy on you?I exalt my God and my soul exalts the king of heaven; and will rejoice in his majesty. — Tobit 13:7
In all, it reminds me of the admonishment St. James writes in his epistle:
You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. — James 4:2b-3.
Sometimes you can ask for the right thing for wrong reasons and get nothing. Others, you can ask for the wrong thing for right reasons and get something even better than you hoped for.
There's a beauty to that type of mercy that I still haven't got my head around.
No? Perhaps that’s just me.
Tobit, along with a few other Old Testament books, aren't commonly found in Protestant bibles so I had never come across it before.
This is from the ESV-CE translation of the text.
His jokes are hellishly bad, after all.
That’d be chapter 13, by the way.