Monday of the 9th Week in Ordinary Time
Readings of the day: Tobit 1:3, 2:1a-8; Psalm 112:1b-2, 3b-4, 5-6; Mark 12:1-12
Readings of the day: Tobit 1:3, 2:1a-8; Psalm 112:1b-2, 3b-4, 5-6; Mark 12:1-12
What do Tobit of the Biblical book named for him and of the first reading we have just heard, St. Boniface, a sister in a religious order, and (I hope and pray) we have in common?
I do not intend this question to be the beginning of a strange riddle. And yet might the Book of Tobit, and the reading we hear today from it, seem a bit strange if not morbid to us? Tobit is written in the form of a legend or “novelette.” I am not sure if anybody here is an expert on the Book of Tobit; I am certainly not. Tobit features “intrigue, mysterious deaths, passionate love, and [even] a fish who heals.” Among books of the Bible, Tobit is quite a page turner!
Today we hear of a “kinsman” of Tobit and his son Tobiah who is found murdered at the hands of the Assyrian King Sennacherib, the enemy of Tobit’s and Tobiah’s people of Israel. When Tobit hears from Tobiah of the murder, he sets out to bury the person who has been killed. To bury the dead of Israel at the time of Assyrian control over Israel was punishable by death, and so by burying his kinsman Tobit was risking his own life. Also, not only does Tobit but himself in mortal danger by what we Catholics consider one of the corporal works of mercy, burying the dead, but he risks— and receives— mockery by his own people! Tobit’s neighbors say mockingly of him as he buries his dead countryman, “He is still not afraid”!
Some or many of us may know of the legend of St. Boniface, whose feast we celebrate today, and Thor’s oak tree. In the legend, Boniface is mocked by the pagan worshippers of the god Thor in what is now Germany. The pagans say to Boniface that, if he were to cut down Thor’s oak tree as he wishes to build a church dedicated to St. Peter, Thor will strike him dead. And so Boniface takes up their challenge. He cuts down Thor’s tree, aided by a gentle wind in finishing off the great oak, and he builds the church dedicated to St. Peter. The pagans find Boniface still alive, with the church built from the oak tree, and so they ask Boniface for Christian baptism. Boniface, like Tobit, was “not afraid,” whether of mockery or of the non-god Thor.
The sister in a religious order I spoke of at first is my maternal great aunt, Sr. Jeanne d’Arc Brunelle, a Holy Cross Sister who passed away this past November. Aunt Jeanne was a fine teacher (instruction, especially of those of weak or no faith, is for us a spiritual work of mercy). She taught in some of the most dangerous places in the world, like Haiti and Zaire (now the still-dangerous Democratic Republic of the Congo). She had a stint teaching biker gang members recently released from prison in Canada so that they might not return to lives of crime after their prison terms ended. Some of Aunt Jeanne’s greatest friends and protectors were those reformed gangsters! She, like Boniface and Tobit, was “not afraid.”
How do we fit in, then, among the likes of Tobit, St. Boniface, Sr. Jeanne d’Arc? What are we willing to risk to act with mercy; to build up the Church, one another, in our world that is still often chaotic and even violent: Martyrdom, or at least some ridicule; friendship with a few gangsters? Would that more people might mock us, for we are “still not afraid”!
I do not intend this question to be the beginning of a strange riddle. And yet might the Book of Tobit, and the reading we hear today from it, seem a bit strange if not morbid to us? Tobit is written in the form of a legend or “novelette.” I am not sure if anybody here is an expert on the Book of Tobit; I am certainly not. Tobit features “intrigue, mysterious deaths, passionate love, and [even] a fish who heals.” Among books of the Bible, Tobit is quite a page turner!
Today we hear of a “kinsman” of Tobit and his son Tobiah who is found murdered at the hands of the Assyrian King Sennacherib, the enemy of Tobit’s and Tobiah’s people of Israel. When Tobit hears from Tobiah of the murder, he sets out to bury the person who has been killed. To bury the dead of Israel at the time of Assyrian control over Israel was punishable by death, and so by burying his kinsman Tobit was risking his own life. Also, not only does Tobit but himself in mortal danger by what we Catholics consider one of the corporal works of mercy, burying the dead, but he risks— and receives— mockery by his own people! Tobit’s neighbors say mockingly of him as he buries his dead countryman, “He is still not afraid”!
Some or many of us may know of the legend of St. Boniface, whose feast we celebrate today, and Thor’s oak tree. In the legend, Boniface is mocked by the pagan worshippers of the god Thor in what is now Germany. The pagans say to Boniface that, if he were to cut down Thor’s oak tree as he wishes to build a church dedicated to St. Peter, Thor will strike him dead. And so Boniface takes up their challenge. He cuts down Thor’s tree, aided by a gentle wind in finishing off the great oak, and he builds the church dedicated to St. Peter. The pagans find Boniface still alive, with the church built from the oak tree, and so they ask Boniface for Christian baptism. Boniface, like Tobit, was “not afraid,” whether of mockery or of the non-god Thor.
The sister in a religious order I spoke of at first is my maternal great aunt, Sr. Jeanne d’Arc Brunelle, a Holy Cross Sister who passed away this past November. Aunt Jeanne was a fine teacher (instruction, especially of those of weak or no faith, is for us a spiritual work of mercy). She taught in some of the most dangerous places in the world, like Haiti and Zaire (now the still-dangerous Democratic Republic of the Congo). She had a stint teaching biker gang members recently released from prison in Canada so that they might not return to lives of crime after their prison terms ended. Some of Aunt Jeanne’s greatest friends and protectors were those reformed gangsters! She, like Boniface and Tobit, was “not afraid.”
How do we fit in, then, among the likes of Tobit, St. Boniface, Sr. Jeanne d’Arc? What are we willing to risk to act with mercy; to build up the Church, one another, in our world that is still often chaotic and even violent: Martyrdom, or at least some ridicule; friendship with a few gangsters? Would that more people might mock us, for we are “still not afraid”!
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