Introduction to Tobit[1]
Tobit, a devout and wealthy Israelite living among the
captives deported to Nineveh from the Northern Kingdom of Israel in 722/721
B.C., suffers severe reverses and is finally blinded. Because of his misfortunes
he begs the Lord to let him die. But recalling the large sum he had formerly
deposited in far-off Media, he sends his son Tobiah there to bring back the
money. In Media, at this same time, a young woman, Sarah, also prays for death,
because she has lost seven husbands, each killed in turn on his wedding night
by the demon Asmodeus. God hears the prayers of Tobit and Sarah and sends the
angel Raphael in human form to aid them both.
JULY 20 Saturday
Tobit,
Chapter 1, Verse 18-19
18
Sennacherib returned from Judea,
having fled during the days of the judgment enacted against him by the King of
Heaven because of the blasphemies he had uttered; whomever he killed I buried.
For in his rage he killed many Israelites, but I used to take their bodies away
by stealth and bury them. So, when Sennacherib looked for them, he could not
find them. 19
But a certain Ninevite went and informed the king
about me, that I was burying them, and I went into hiding. When I realized that
the king knew about me and that I was being hunted to be put to death, I became
afraid and took flight.
Tobit although righteous was also not stupid, even
though he opposed the evil in his neighborhood he did not like to suffer for it
so he naturally kept his good deeds secret and did not want to be found out by
the evil oppressors.
- Both names,
Tobit and Tobias (sometimes written Tobiah), mean “Yahweh is my good.”
Tobit was the son of Tobiel, which also means “Yahweh is my good.” He was
a native of Thisbe in Naphtali. Their land allotment lay NW of the
Sea of Galilee. After the division of David’s kingdom, Naphtali was
one of the northern tribes.
- Tobit
lamented the split, but that concern paled in contrast to his sadness over
the people’s refusal to worship in the temple in Jerusalem. Jeroboam, the
king of the northern kingdom, had set up “golden calves” at Dan (in the
north) and Bethel (in the south) to make it easier for northern citizens
not to have to go to Jerusalem. Most were taking full advantage of
that. Tobit, however, continued to make the trek to Jerusalem to
worship. He claimed he was the only one who did so. He obviously
felt very isolated from his countrymen, though occasionally he took his
wife and relatives with him.
- Tobit offered
sacrifices and gave alms to the temple, the priests, and the poor. When it
was time for him to marry, he took a wife from his tribe. His wife’s name
was Hannah, which means “Grace.” According to the story, Tobit was among
those who were exiled to Nineveh during the reign of Shalmaneser (727-722
BCE). Most scholars, however, think the deportation of Naphtali
occurred under Tiglath-pileser (745-727 BCE). Tobit was a “young man” when
this happened. He continued to be an observant Jew while in exile,
refusing to eat Gentile food.
- As an
observant Jew, he followed not only the spirit but also the letter of the
law, even in Nineveh. Because he was faithful to the covenant, he was
blessed by God. He was in good standing with Shalmaneser and worked in his
court. It seems that his position might have been “buyer of
provisions.” This allowed him to travel frequently to Media, where
he had family.
- His was an
important position in Shalmaneser’s court. In gratitude for his services,
Shalmaneser gave him ten talents of silver. Scholars argue over the
value of this amount, but it might have been $10,000-$20,000, surely a
tidy sum in antiquity. On one of his trips to Media, he managed to give
this money to his cousins for safekeeping.
- In addition
to his work in the court, Tobit gave alms to poor people in Nineveh and
made sure that every dead Jew had a proper burial. Ironically, it
would be those good deeds that would get him into trouble. When
Sennacherib took over in 705 BCE, he instituted a new policy that the
bodies of dead Jews should be left to rot as a message for others.
Undaunted, Tobit defied this law and carried off the bodies to bury them.
For a Jew to remain unburied and have his body rot in the open or eaten by
animals was the ultimate degradation.
- Burying
bodies is the main “good work” of the book of Tobit. After the new
king came to power, such actions became very risky. Tobit was
essentially risking his life each time he did it. It was not long before
his neighbors turned him in. When the authorities heard what Tobit was
doing, they confiscated all of his possessions and would have killed him
if he had not vanished, taking his wife and son with him.
Mountaineering[2]
Sir Edmund Hillary born on
this day. He was the first man to summit Mt. Everest on May 29,
1953. Climbing a summit is deeply spiritual. Christ climbed tabor, Moses Sinai
and even St. Patrick had a favorite climb today call Patrick’s Croagh. We even
have Saints that were mountaineers. Today we will look at Pier Giorgio.
Pier Giorgio Michelangelo Frassati was born in Turin, Italy on April
6, 1901. His mother, Adelaide Ametis, was a painter. His father Alfredo was the
founder and director of the newspaper, “La Stampa," and was influential in Italian politics, holding
positions as an Italian Senator and Ambassador to Germany.
At an early age, Pier Giorgio
joined the Marian Sodality and the Apostleship of Prayer, and obtained
permission to receive daily Communion (which was rare at that time). He
developed a deep spiritual life which he never hesitated to share with his
friends. The Holy Eucharist and the Blessed Virgin were the two poles of his
world of prayer. At the age of 17, he joined the St. Vincent de Paul Society
and dedicated much of his spare time to serving the sick and the needy, caring
for orphans, and assisting the demobilized servicemen returning from World War
I.
He decided to become a mining engineer, studying at the Royal Polytechnic University of Turin, so he could “serve Christ better among the miners," as he told a friend. Although he considered his studies his first duty, they did not keep him from social and political activism. In 1919, he joined the Catholic Student Foundation and the organization known as Catholic Action. He became a very active member of the People’s Party, which promoted the Catholic Church’s social teaching based on the principles of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical letter, Rerum Novarum.
He decided to become a mining engineer, studying at the Royal Polytechnic University of Turin, so he could “serve Christ better among the miners," as he told a friend. Although he considered his studies his first duty, they did not keep him from social and political activism. In 1919, he joined the Catholic Student Foundation and the organization known as Catholic Action. He became a very active member of the People’s Party, which promoted the Catholic Church’s social teaching based on the principles of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical letter, Rerum Novarum.
What little he did have, Pier Giorgio gave to help the
poor, even using his bus fare for charity and then running home to be on time
for meals. The poor and the suffering were his masters, and he was literally
their servant, which he considered a privilege. His charity did not simply
involve giving something to others, but giving completely of himself. This was
fed by daily communion with Christ in the Holy Eucharist and by frequent
nocturnal adoration, by meditation on St. Paul’s “Hymn of Charity” (I
Corinthians 13), and by the writings of St. Catherine of Siena. He often
sacrificed vacations at the Frassati summer home in Pollone (outside of Turin)
because, as he said, “If everybody leaves Turin, who will take care of the
poor?”
In 1921, he was a central figure in Ravenna,
enthusiastically helping to organize the first convention of Pax Romana, an
association which had as its purpose the unification of all Catholic students
throughout the world for the purpose of working together for universal peace.
Mountain climbing was one of his favorite sports.
Outings in the mountains, which he organized with his friends, also served as
opportunities for his apostolic work. He never lost the chance to lead his
friends to Mass, to the reading of Scripture, and to praying the rosary.
He often went to the theater, to the opera, and to
museums. He loved art and music, and could quote whole passages of the poet
Dante.
Fondness for the epistles of St. Paul sparked his zeal
for fraternal charity, and the fiery sermons of the Renaissance preacher and
reformer Girolamo
Savonarola and the writings of St. Catherine impelled him in
1922 to join the Lay Dominicans (Third Order of St. Dominic). He chose the name
Girolamo after his personal hero, Savonarola. “I am a fervent admirer of this
friar, who died as a saint at the stake," he wrote to a friend. Like his
father, he was strongly anti-Fascist and did nothing to hide his political
views. He physically defended the faith at times involved in fights, first with
anticlerical Communists and later with Fascists. Participating in a
Church-organized demonstration in Rome on one occasion, he stood up to police
violence and rallied the other young people by grabbing the group’s banner,
which the royal guards had knocked out of another student’s hands. Pier Giorgio
held it even higher, while using the banner’s pole to fend off the blows of the
guards.
Just before receiving his university degree, Pier
Giorgio contracted poliomyelitis, which doctors later speculated he caught from
the sick whom he tended. Neglecting his own health because his grandmother was
dying, after six days of terrible suffering Pier Giorgio died at the age of 24
on July 4, 1925. His last preoccupation was for the poor. On the eve of his
death, with a paralyzed hand he scribbled a message to a friend, asking him to
take the medicine needed for injections to be given to Converso, a poor sick
man he had been visiting.
Pier Giorgio’s funeral was a triumph. The streets of
the city were lined with a multitude of mourners who were unknown to his family
-- the poor and the needy whom he had served so unselfishly for seven years.
Many of these people, in turn, were surprised to learn that the saintly young
man they knew had actually been the heir of the influential Frassati family. Pope
John Paul II, after visiting his original tomb in the family plot in Pollone,
said in 1989: “I wanted to pay homage to a young man who was able to witness to
Christ with singular effectiveness in this century of ours. When I was a young
man, I, too, felt the beneficial influence of his example and, as a student, I
was impressed by the force of his testimony."
On May 20, 1990, in St. Peter’s Square which was
filled with thousands of people, the Pope beatified Pier Giorgio Frassati,
calling him the “Man of the Eight Beatitudes.”
His mortal remains, found completely intact and
incorrupt upon their exhumation on March 31, 1981, were transferred from the
family tomb in Pollone to the cathedral in Turin. Many pilgrims, especially
students and the young, come to the tomb of Blessed Frassati to seek favors and
the courage to follow his example.
Daily Devotions
[1]http://www.biblewise.com/bible_study/characters/tobit-and-tobias.php
[2]
https://frassatiusa.org/frassati-biography
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