Session 8: Tobit — Marriage, Angels, and the Providence You Can't See

Opening Prayer

LEADER: Let us begin by asking the Holy Spirit to be with us tonight.

ALL: Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in us the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and we shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth. O God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit did instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that by the same Holy Spirit we may be truly wise and ever rejoice in His consolation, through Christ our Lord. Amen.

LEADER: Tonight we enter the deuterocanonical books — the seven books that make the Catholic Bible unique. We begin with a love story. But it is a love story that runs entirely on providence that no one in it can see.

ALL: "And now, O Lord, I am not taking this kinswoman of mine because of lust, but with sincerity. Grant that I may find mercy and grow old together with her." — Tobit 8:7

Scripture Assignments

Before beginning, assign each passage to a man in the group. When the teaching reaches that passage, he reads it aloud.

Passage 1: Tobit 1:1–3, 16–17
Passage 2: Tobit 3:1–6, 11–15
Passage 3: Tobit 6:10–18
Passage 4: Tobit 12:11–15

The Book That Protestantism Lost

In 1546, when Martin Luther translated the Bible into German, he made a decision that most Protestant Christians have inherited without examining: he removed seven books from the Old Testament, including Tobit. His reason was partly theological — some of the deuterocanonical books contradict doctrines he was developing — and partly textual — he preferred the shorter Hebrew canon over the Greek Septuagint that the ancient Church had used.

The result is that most Christians today have never heard the story of Tobit and Tobias. They don't know St. Raphael. They don't know Sarah. They don't know one of the most beautiful, practical, and theologically rich treatments of marriage in all of Scripture.

That changes tonight.

Teaching Block 1 — Two People Praying on the Same Day

Tobit was from the tribe and city of Naphtali (which is in the upper parts of Galilee above Asher, after the way, which leads to the west, that has on its left the city of Sephet). Although he had been taken captive in the days of Shalmaneser, the king of the Assyrians, even in such a situation as captivity, he did not desert the way of truth. So then, every day, all that he was able to obtain, he bestowed on his fellow captive brothers, who were from his kindred. But when he had arrived at Rages, a city of the Medes, he had ten talents of silver, from that which he had been given in honor by the king. And when, in the midst of the great tumult of his kindred, he saw the destitution of Gabael, who was from his tribe, he loaned him, under a written agreement, the aforementioned weight of silver.
Tobit 1:1-3,16-17 — CPDV

Tobit is a righteous man living in exile in Nineveh — the same Nineveh Nahum would later prophesy against. He has been blinded by sparrow droppings falling into his eyes while he slept under a tree after burying a dead Israelite. His wife has had to go to work. His relatives mock him. He is poor, blind, and humiliated.

He prays for death.

Then Tobit sighed, and he began to pray with tears, saying, "O Lord, you are just and all your judgments are just, and all your ways are mercy, and truth, and judgment. And now, O Lord, remember me, and do not take vengeance for my sins, and do not call to mind my offenses, nor those of my parents. For we have not obeyed your precepts, and so we have been handed over to plundering and to captivity, and to death, and to mockery, and as a disgrace before all the nations, among which you have dispersed us. And now, O Lord, great are your judgments. For we have not acted according to your precepts, and we have not walked sincerely before you. And now, O Lord, do with me according to your will, and order my spirit to be received in peace. For it is more expedient for me to die, than to live." But, continuing in prayer with tears, she beseeched God, so that he would liberate her from this reproach. And it happened on the third day, while she was completing her prayer, blessing the Lord, that she said: "Blessed is your name, O God of our fathers, who, though you had been angry, will show mercy. And in time of tribulation, you dismiss the sins of those who call upon you. To you, O Lord, I turn my face; to you, I direct my eyes. I beg you, O Lord, that you may absolve me from the chains of this reproach, or at least take me away from the earth.
Tobit 3:1-6,11-15 — CPDV

On the same day, in a city far away, a young woman named Sarah is also praying for death. She has been married seven times. Seven times, a demon named Asmodeus has killed her husband on their wedding night before the marriage could be consummated. Her maidservant mocks her. The people in the city are talking. She is carrying a shame she did not earn.

Two people, in two different cities, praying for death on the same day.

The text tells us: their prayers were heard before the glory of God. And God sends the angel St. Raphael — whose name means God heals — to address both of them at once, through a journey neither of them planned.

This is not coincidence arranged to look like providence. This is providence arranged to look like a journey.

Discussion Question 1: Tobit and Sarah are both suffering from shame they did not earn — he through circumstance, she through the attacks of a demon. Neither of them knows the other exists. Yet God is already moving to connect their stories. Is there a way you can look back on your own life and see two threads being woven together that you couldn't see at the time? What does that do to how you read your current suffering?

Teaching Block 2 — The Angel Who Walked Beside Him

And Tobias said to him, "Where do you prefer that we stay?" And the Angel, responding, said: "Here is one named Raguel, a man closely related to you from your tribe, and he has a daughter named Sarah, but he has no other male or female, except her. All his livelihood is dependent upon you, and you ought to take her to yourself in marriage. Therefore, ask for her from her father, and he will give her to you as wife." Then Tobias responded, and he said: "I hear that she has been given to seven husbands, and they passed away. But I have even heard this: that a demon killed them. Therefore, I am afraid, lest this may happen to me also. And since I am the only child of my parents, I might send their old age with sorrow to the grave." Then the Angel Raphael said to him: "Listen to me, and I will reveal to you who they are, over whom the demon can prevail. For example, those who receive marriage in such manner as to exclude God from themselves and from their mind, and in such a manner as to empty themselves to their lust, like the horse and mule, which have no understanding, over them the demon has power. But you, when you will have accepted her, enter the bedroom and for three days keep yourself continent from her, and empty yourself to nothing other than prayers with her.
Tobit 6:10-18 — CPDV

Tobit sends his son Tobias on a journey to collect a debt, and a stranger volunteers to guide him. The stranger is St. Raphael, disguised as a human. Tobias doesn't know this. He just knows that this man seems trustworthy and capable.

Over the course of the journey, St. Raphael teaches Tobias how to prepare a remedy from a fish. He tells him about Sarah. He explains that God has intended her for Tobias from before either of them was born. He equips him to defeat the demon. He prepares him for a marriage that will last.

And Tobias never knows, until the very end, that he has been walking with an angel.

This is the theological heart of the book. Providence is not usually announced. It does not typically announce itself as it works. The person beside you on the journey — the mentor, the friend, the stranger who shows up at the right time — may be functioning as St. Raphael without either of you knowing it. The healing is real. The guidance is real. The angel is real. You simply aren't allowed to see it yet.

Therefore, I reveal the truth to you, and I will not hide the explanation from you. When you prayed with tears, and buried the dead, and left behind your dinner, and hid the dead by day in your house, and buried them by night: I offered your prayer to the Lord. And because you were acceptable to God, it was necessary for you to be tested by trials. And now, the Lord has sent me to cure you, and to free Sarah, your son's wife, from the demon. For I am the Angel Raphael, one of seven, who stand before the Lord."
Tobit 12:11-15 — CPDV

When St. Raphael finally reveals himself, he says something that reframes the entire story: I was sent to test you, Tobit, and your daughter-in-law Sarah. I brought your prayer and Sarah's prayer before the Holy One. The suffering was permitted. The angel was present during the suffering. The prayers were heard during the suffering. The testing was real. And the healing was coming.

St. Raphael is one of seven angels who stand and enter before the glory of God. The Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms the existence of guardian angels — beings assigned to accompany us through our lives. Tobit is the only book in Scripture that shows us what that actually looks like: a man walking a long journey with an angel at his side, not knowing, learning, being equipped, being healed.

Discussion Question 2: Tobias walked an entire journey with an angel and didn't know it. St. Raphael taught him, guided him, and equipped him — all in disguise. Who has functioned as St. Raphael in your life? A person who showed up at exactly the right time, equipped you for something you didn't know was coming, and maybe disappeared as quickly as they arrived?

Teaching Block 3 — The Prayer Before the Wedding Night

Tobit is the only book in Scripture that records the prayer a husband prays on his wedding night. Tobias and Sarah, in the bridal chamber, before anything else, kneel and pray together. And Tobias' prayer is worth memorizing.

"Blessed are You, O God of our fathers... You made Adam and gave him Eve his wife as a helper and support. From them the human race has descended. You said, 'It is not good that man should be alone; let us make a helper for him like himself.' And now, O Lord, I am not taking this kinswoman of mine because of lust, but with sincerity. Grant that I may find mercy and grow old together with her."

This prayer connects their marriage to Genesis. It names the purpose of marriage — companionship, not merely reproduction or social order. It is explicitly not motivated by lust. And it asks not for happiness or prosperity but for mercy — the word that runs through the entire book like a thread — and for the gift of growing old together.

The demon Asmodeus, the text tells us, flees to the remotest parts of Egypt when he hears this prayer. The marriage that has been attacked seven times is protected on its first night by prayer and by God's sending of St. Raphael to bind the demon.

The practical application is not subtle. Tobit is a manual for how to enter marriage and how to sustain it — through prayer, through fidelity, through invoking God's presence at every threshold.

Discussion Question 3: The prayer Tobias prays — "I am not taking her because of lust, but with sincerity; grant that I may find mercy and grow old together with her" — is one of the most honest and concrete marriage prayers in Scripture. If you are married: does that prayer describe the posture of your marriage right now? If you are not: what would it mean to carry that intention into the relationships you are forming?

This Week

Read Tobit chapters 3 and 8 this week — the prayers of two people who thought they were praying for death, and the prayer of a man on his wedding night. Then pray for the marriages in this room. By name. Specifically. The angel St. Raphael, whose name means God heals, is one of the angels the Church specifically asks to intercede for us. Ask him this week.

Closing Prayer

Take prayer requests and close out.