One of the Most Moving Passages in Scripture

[Music] hi this is dr john bergsma from the saint paul center for biblical theology and franciscan university of steubenville and we are on wednesday of the ninth week in ordinary time not that there's anything ordinary about time when we are in relationship with god every moment is extraordinary every moment gives us the opportunity to love god with our entire heart and sanctify that very moment part of our priestly duty and our priestly responsibility and privilege by virtue of our baptism but that's a whole other talk for another time but getting back to wednesday of the ninth week of ordinary time at this moment in the church's calendar we are reading through the book of tobit in the first reading and the gospel of mark in the gospel and we are allowing the word of god to shape the ebb and flow of our spiritual life during ordinary time that's what's characteristic about ordinary time we read through the scripture in ordinary time and scripture sets the agenda so today oh my goodness the beautiful book of tobit what a powerful book this book was found among the dead sea scrolls those holy jewish monks on the shores of the dead sea had no less than five copies of the book of tobit in their library because they loved it so much and i argued that they got their theology of marriage which is very beautiful uh from the book of tobit and uh very cl they had an almost christian view of marriage those holy jewish monks that left us the dead sea scrolls but the book of tobit what a wonderful book thank thank the lord that it is in our scriptures that it is in our bible as you know our separated brethren do not have it in their bible so i grew up not reading the book of tobit but now it has become one of my favorite old testament books and we have just a scene of tremendous pathos today in our first reading uh kind of the the the nader the low point of uh the book when two of the protagonists reach the depths of despair and indeed want to die and tobit his life has unraveled even though he is so scrupulous about the commandments of the lord nonetheless his obedience to god law to god's law has given him no material benefit and in fact has led him to a position of of disease and um and poverty and mockery uh within his community and he just prays this prayer confessing the sins of his his own sins and the sins of his ancestor and just basically asking the lord for death because his life has become so painful and if you aren't moved by the reading of this maybe you haven't lived very long but i can certainly relate and i'm sure uh you can as well uh to this sorrow because sometimes we're just brought to this point maybe you are a long uh lived christian maybe you've been living the christian life for a long time and been trying to walk with the lord for a long time and there have been moments where your following of the lord does not seem to have resulted in any material benefit whatsoever and you just are brought to a low point of grief and you just pray lord lord take me now the lord understands this you know the lord experienced something similar on the cross crying out in anguish on the cross uh it's different we won't go in all the ways that's a little bit different but suffice to say the lord knows this this anguish and he understands when we are to this point and then and then sarah oh i love sarah what a wonderful person she is she's so pure she's uh uh just has a sincere love for the lord and just put in this terrible situation her father keeps trying to marry her off to extended relatives she wants to be married she wants to raise a family all these different men that she's been paired up with are rascals and they end up being killed by a demon before she's able to uh to consummate her marriage with them and and then she gets blamed for it just in this terrible situation and she just she wants to kill herself she's at that point of grief but she doesn't want to bring any more disgrace to her father so she can't even have the little consolation of ending her life and and so she calls out to the lord in prayer and she praised him and then she concludes her prayer by saying blessed are you o lord merciful god blessed is your holy and honorable name blessed are you in all your works forever she says she's like she's like job brought to his lowest point still praising god as job says the lord takes the lord gives lord takes away blessed be the name of the lord she still worships even when brought to this point where just feels like she has no hope and nothing to live for yet and then at this very moment it says at that very time the prayer of these two supplements was heard in the glorious presence of almighty god and raphael was sent to heal them both raphael this beautiful angel saint raphael his name means god is a healer and this is the message of the book of tobit that god is close to the brokenhearted that is the message of this book god is close to the brokenhearted and he sends his angels to heal the brokenhearted so if you're in that situation this day hear the book of tobit and be consoled that god is hearing your prayer as you are calling out in your hardship and god will send his angels for your healing as well and then we move to our gospel and there's a providential connection here with the gospel because we read about jesus in the gospel of mark being tested by those wicked sadducees they were kind of like religious liberals of their day they were religious functionaries they controlled the temple but they didn't have faith and how often have we run into people like this who are even making their living by doing something religious something for the church but internally they have lost their faith and just become cynical and uh so the sadducees come and they they don't believe in the resurrection they don't believe in spirits or eternal life you know this they you know religion is just a temporal thing it's it's good for its sociological benefits or its economic benefits or something like that but they have no view of the transcendent and so the sadducees come and they say teacher moses wrote for us if someone's brother dies leaving a wife but no child his brother must take his wife et cetera et cetera and they they uh present jesus with this theological dilemma you know if there's an afterlife how do you resolve these multiple marriages of this woman who was married from one brother to another according to the law of moses where one brother dies it's a similar situation to what sarah had experienced she had been married to seven of her kinsmen and they had all died you know so not exactly the same situation but a similar situation now whose wife is she gonna be in uh in the world to come and um so the point of the sadducees is look jesus come on admit it jesus you teacher from rap from nazareth nazareth excuse me look you know the uh the resurrection of the dead and eternal life would would uh if that were true it would present unsolvable dilemmas unsolvable paradoxes so it simply can't be true it can't really be the case there can't be eternal life and there can't be a resurrection from the dead too many things would be paradoxes if that were the case so um it's a kind of argument called a reduxio absurdum you show that the the position of your opponent leads to absurd results and so they're trying to defeat jesus in argument but he responds are you not misled because you do not know the scriptures or the power of god i love that response you know you rascals you don't know the bible and you don't know god's power how many times do we not fall into error as well because we don't know the scriptures and we don't know god's power you know but if we knew the scriptures that we knew the power of god we would live differently we would live lives of faith and lives of confidence so he goes on when they rise from the dead they neither marry nor are given a marriage but they are like the angels in heaven for as for the dead being raised have you not read in the book of moses in the passage about the bush how god told them i am the god of abraham the god of isaac and the god of jacob he is not the god of the dead but of the living and jesus argument hangs basically on the tents of the verb you know it's a little bit different because we're working in greek and hebrew and but essentially it is this if god were to identify himself by people who were dead he would have had to say something like i was the god of abraham the god of isaac and the god of jacob but the fact that god in exodus 3 identifies himself as the god of abraham isaac and jacob in the present contemporaneously implies that abraham isaac and jacob are still in existence okay because god for a number of reasons but god's not going to identify himself by the dead okay he identifies himself with the living because all are alive to him so what a comforting passage here if you have deceased loved ones who have died in the lord they are alive to god god is their god so let us take comfort in that and for ourselves you know god sends his angel to tobit and sarah and they experience god's goodness during their earthly temporal lives and within a year of that passage that we read in uh in our first reading their lives would be restored and god often does that for us but even if god does not restore prosperity and consolation to us in this temporal life even if we die in our grief the gospel gives us the hope and the the confidence that we will live with god god will be our god god will be the god of john god will be the god of bill god will be the god of sally or whatever your name is put your name in there god is the god of you and you will live to god provided you put your trust in the one who teaches us this which is jesus let's put our trust in him let's obey him and he will grant us eternal life he will raise us up at the last day that's his promise from john 6. so that is how god will heal us in the end by raising us from the dead and wiping every tear from our eyes the book of revelation says and and as it were giving us that divine hug that divine embrace in the life to come oh what hope there is in these readings christianity is not some kind of sociological project to improve the economy and the culture i mean there's a lot of things that would improve if we followed the christian faith in our culture but that's not the ultimate point the ultimate point is eternal life with god because this life is so short just a blink of the eye and then we're going to have eternity with god let's let's meditate on these things and allow them to give us love joy and peace today this is dr john bergsma and we're talking about the readings for wednesday of the ninth week of ordinary time till next time may you meditate on these beautiful things yes indeed you

Channel: St. Paul Center

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Length: 14min 5sec (845 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 02 2021