Tuesday, IX Week -- Memorial of St. Boniface
(Tobit 2)
Tobit tries to please God and to help his neighbor. But often his emotions overcome his better judgment moving him to make terrible blunders. In the episode of his story today he accuses his hard-working wife of stealing. We can almost hear Tobit cry out in remorse, “God, what a mess I make of everything. Why don’t you take my life?” Perhaps some of us, after having submitting to similarly impulsive tendencies, have felt the same self-disgust.
Neither Tobit nor we need despair, however. God hears the cries of those who call to him. We must curb the inclination to judge others’ harshly while continuing to live according to God’s commands. Later this week we will see how Tobit’s story ends happily as indeed will ours when we remain faithful.
As an aside, we can note that Tobit lives in ancient Nineveh which is presently the city of Mosul in Iraq. Persecution there today resembles that of twenty-seven hundred years ago when Tobit was a minority Jew among the Assyrian populace. Radical Muslim elements are now targeting Christians there. On Sunday, a Chaldean rite priest and three young deacons were found murdered outside their church. According to the Vatican press report, no one dared to pick up their bodies out of fear of being attacked. We want to pray in solidarity for Iraqi Christians and indeed for all suffering such outrage.
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