Tuesday of
the 9th Week in Ordinary Time
June 2, 2015 6:30am
Through this entire week, the
first reading at Mass is from the Old Testament Book of Tobit.
Yesterday we got our first
picture of this man Tobit as a compassionate and very spiritual Jew.
This comes across in his care for
the poor and burying of the body of a man who had been murdered.
Today we get a different picture
of Tobit.
He has been blinded for some
years because of a freak accident – taking a nap under a tree and having bird
droppings blind him!
Today we see Tobit snipping at
his wife – maybe, in our terms, because she was now the breadwinner or at least
made more money than he did.
And Tobit’s wife Anna retaliates
with some sharpness of her own.
These are both good people.
In showing their weakness and
humanity, the Scripture wants us to be aware of ourselves:
maybe losing our equanimity under
adversity;
maybe mistrusting others and not
taking them at their word;
maybe presuming bad intentions in
what others do;
maybe reading into what others
say without talking about it;
maybe picking at others to feel
better about ourselves;
maybe saying biting things that
we regret but are hard to take back.
So, Tobit is a noble and good and
spiritual enough person to have an entire story and book of the Bible named
after him.
His strong traits that emerge
through this week are there as an example for us.
And his weaknesses are also there
to get us to reflect on and be aware of ourselves.
