The Angel Who Called Himself Azarias

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A young man is standing up to his ankles in the river Tigris, at dusk, washing the dust of the road off his feet. He is tired. He is a long way from home. He is thinking, perhaps, about supper.

And then the water in front of him bulges, and something very large and very silver comes up out of the river with its mouth open, and it is quite clearly, quite definitely, aiming for his foot.

The young man yells. His dog barks. And his travelling companion, a pleasant, sensible fellow he hired only a few days ago, says, perfectly calmly, as if this were the most ordinary thing in the world:

"Grab it. Don't let it get away."

But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Hello, and welcome to Saints by Candlelight, stories of saints, angels and patriarchs from the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, told for bedtime. These episodes are written by an AI and read by a synthetic voice, and they try very hard to be faithful. Tonight's story comes from the Book of Tobit, which Catholic and Orthodox Christians read as part of the Old Testament, and some of the small conversations along the road are our own invention, told in the spirit of the original. So get comfortable. Dim the lights. And let's begin.

Our story starts in a city called Nineveh.

If you have heard of Nineveh at all, it is probably because of Jonah, the prophet who was told to go there, went the other way, and was given a free ride back by a very large fish. Fish, you will discover, are a recurring theme in stories about Nineveh. I do not know why. Nobody does.

Nineveh sat on the banks of the river Tigris, in the land we now call northern Iraq, and in its day it was the great city of the Assyrian empire. Imagine enormous walls. Imagine palaces with stone lions at the gates, lions with the heads of bearded men, which is the kind of thing that seems like a good idea when you are an emperor and nobody is allowed to tell you otherwise. Imagine markets full of wool and dates and copper pots, and soldiers, and tax collectors, and people from every corner of the empire, many of whom had not chosen to be there.

Because the Assyrians had a habit. When they conquered a country, they did not simply leave a governor in charge and go home. They picked up a good part of the population and moved it somewhere else, on the theory that people who have been uprooted from their land and their neighbours are less likely to organise a rebellion. It was effective, and it was cruel, and it is how a great many people from the northern kingdom of Israel found themselves living in Nineveh, a very long way from the hills of Galilee.

One of those people was a man named Tobit.

Tobit was from the tribe of Naphtali, from a little town in the north of Israel, and he tells us himself, right at the start of his book, what kind of man he was. "I, Tobit," he says, "walked in the ways of truth and righteousness all the days of my life." Which is, I grant you, the sort of thing you might be slightly suspicious of if a man said it about himself at a dinner party. But keep listening, because the book is going to test that claim rather hard.

Here is what Tobit did. He gave food to the hungry and clothes to the naked. He gave a tenth of what he had to the poor. And he did one thing that was dangerous. When one of his own people died in Nineveh, a poor man perhaps, or an executed man, and the body was thrown out behind the city wall to lie there, Tobit went out, often at night, and buried him. Properly. With respect. Because to Tobit, a human being was not rubbish, even after he had died, and even if the king had said he was.

The king did not like this. One of the kings, Sennacherib, executed a number of Tobit's people in a temper, and Tobit quietly buried them, and somebody from Nineveh went and told on him. Tobit had to run and hide, and everything he owned was taken. Everything except his wife, Anna, and his son, Tobias.

Then the king died. A new king came, and Tobit's nephew, a clever man named Ahikar, happened to be the new king's chief cupbearer and keeper of the signet ring, which in those days meant something like chief of staff. Ahikar put in a word, and Tobit was allowed to come home.

If this were a different kind of story, that would be the happy ending. Tobit is home, his family is together, the dangerous king is gone. Roll the credits.

But this is not that kind of story. This is the kind of story where things get a good deal worse before they get better. So let's begin on the day they got worse.

It was the feast of Pentecost, which for Tobit's people was the Feast of Weeks, the harvest festival, fifty days after Passover. Anna had made a good dinner. Tobit tells us there were many different dishes on the table, and you can picture him sitting down to it, the smell of fresh bread, perhaps some lamb, perhaps lentils with cumin, the sort of meal you look at and think, well, life is not so bad after all.

And then he looked at all that food and thought, this is too much for three people.

So he said to his son, "Tobias, go out into the city. Find one of our people who is poor, someone who remembers God with his whole heart, and bring him here to eat with us. I'll wait for you."

This is a lovely thing to do, and I want you to notice it, because the whole story turns on Tobit being the kind of man who does things like this. He does not wait for the poor to come and knock. He sends someone out to look for them.

Tobias went. And he came back without a guest.

"Father," he said, "one of our people has been murdered. He's lying in the marketplace. Someone strangled him, and they've just left him there."

Tobit stood up from the table. He did not eat a mouthful. He went out to the marketplace, picked the man up, and carried him to a room to lie there until sunset, when it would be possible to bury him. Then he came home and washed and ate his dinner in sorrow, remembering the words of the prophet Amos, "Your feasts shall be turned into mourning."

When the sun went down he went out and dug a grave and buried the man. And his neighbours laughed at him. "Look at him," they said. "He's already been hunted for doing this once. He ran away. He lost everything. And here he is, doing it again."

Tobit came home that night tired and unclean from the burial, and because he did not want to bring that into the house, he lay down to sleep outside, against the wall of the courtyard, with his face uncovered, under the warm night sky.

Now. I want to prepare you for what happens next, because it is one of the strangest and least dignified details in the whole of Scripture.

There were sparrows on the wall above him.

And the sparrows did what sparrows do.

And it went in his eyes.

I'm sorry. I did warn you. The text is very matter of fact about it. Warm droppings from the sparrows fell into his eyes, and white films grew over them. He went to the doctors, and the doctors put ointments on, and the more ointment they put on, the worse it got, which, frankly, is a story as old as medicine itself. And in the end, Tobit was blind.

Think about that for a moment. The most generous man in Nineveh, the man who buries the dead and feeds the poor, the man who had just left his own feast to carry a stranger out of the street, goes blind because of a sparrow. There is no villain to blame. No wicked king. Just a bird, and bad luck, and doctors who made it worse.

The Book of Tobit does not pretend to explain why bad things happen to good people. It simply tells you that they do. And then it tells you what happened next.

What happened next was that the family got poor.

Ahikar, the helpful nephew, supported them for a couple of years, and then he went away to another province. And so Anna, Tobit's wife, went out to work. She took in weaving, the kind of work women did at home in those days, spinning wool and weaving cloth for the merchants, and she was paid for it.

One day she finished a big piece of work, and the people who had ordered it were so pleased that on top of her wages they gave her a young goat as a present. She brought it home, and it bleated, and Tobit heard it.

"Where did that goat come from?" he said. "It isn't stolen, is it? Give it back to its owners. We have no right to eat anything stolen."

Anna said, "It was a gift. They gave it to me on top of my wages."

And Tobit did not believe her. He tells us so himself, to his credit. He says, "I did not believe her, and I told her to give it back, and I blushed at her."

Now you have to imagine Anna at this point. She has been working all day. She has been supporting the family for months. Her husband, who cannot see, who spends his days sitting in the house, has just accused her of stealing a goat. And she turns round and says the sharpest thing anyone says in the whole book.

"Where are your acts of charity now? Where are your righteous deeds? Look at you. Everyone can see what they got you."

Ouch.

I think the book includes this scene because it is honest. Good people, under strain, say unkind things to each other. Tobit, who really was a righteous man, was also proud and a bit suspicious. Anna, who really was a loyal wife, had a temper when she was tired. Neither of them is a villain. They are just two worn-out people in a small house with a goat.

And Tobit did not answer her. He went away by himself, and he wept, and he prayed. It was a prayer of a man who had run out of strength. He said to God, more or less, you are just, and your ways are mercy and truth, and I have sinned, and my people have sinned. And then he said, I have had enough. Let me die. It is better for me to die than to keep living like this.

Now, here the story does something clever. It cuts away. Like a film, it leaves Tobit weeping in Nineveh and takes us hundreds of miles to the east, across the mountains, to a city called Ecbatana in the land of Media, in what is now Iran. And it tells us that on that very same day, perhaps at that very same hour, someone else was praying the same prayer.

Her name was Sarah.

Sarah was the only daughter of a man called Raguel, who was a relative of Tobit's, and she had a problem that was, in its own way, even worse than blindness. She had been married seven times. And seven times, on the wedding night, before the marriage could even begin, her new husband had died.

The book tells us why. A demon called Asmodeus had attached himself to her, and he killed each bridegroom, one after another. I'm not going to linger on Asmodeus, because this is a bedtime story and he does not deserve the attention. All you need to know is that he was a nasty piece of work, that he was jealous and cruel, and that he is going to come off very badly in about twenty minutes.

But imagine being Sarah. It wasn't her fault. She had done nothing wrong. And yet the town had decided that she was the problem. That very day, one of her father's own maids had turned on her and said, "You're the one who kills your husbands. Seven of them! Why do you beat us? Go and join them. May we never see a son or daughter of yours."

Sarah went up to her room in her father's house, and she was so unhappy that for a moment she thought about ending her own life. And then she thought about her father. He was a good man, and she was his only child, and she thought, no. If I do that, people will say to him, you had one beloved daughter and she did that because of her troubles, and it will bring his grey hairs down to the grave in sorrow. I won't do that to him.

So instead, she did what Tobit did. She stood by the window, and she stretched out her hands, and she prayed.

And here is the first great turning point of the story, and it comes in one quiet sentence. The book says that at that very moment, the prayers of both of them were heard in the presence of the glory of God. And God sent his angel Raphael to heal them both. To take the white films off Tobit's eyes, so he could see the light of God again. And to give Sarah as a wife to Tobit's son, Tobias, and to set her free from the demon.

Two prayers. Two people who had never met. Hundreds of miles apart. One answer.

Raphael's name, by the way, means "God heals." Keep that in mind.

Back in Nineveh, Tobit, who thought he was about to die, decided he had better get his affairs in order. And as he lay there going over things, he suddenly remembered something.

Money.

Years before, in the good times, when he was a buyer for the king, Tobit had travelled to Media, and he had left a large sum of silver, ten talents, which is an enormous amount of money, in the safekeeping of a man called Gabael, in a city called Rages. He had never collected it. With everything else that had happened, the running and hiding and the blindness, it had simply been sitting there. For twenty years.

I find this detail endlessly comforting. A man so honest and so distracted that he forgets about a fortune he has left with a friend. There is hope for all of us.

So Tobit called his son. And before he sent him off on the journey, he sat him down and gave him a long talk. It is one of the most beautiful pieces of fatherly advice ever written down, and also, if you are a young man about to leave on an adventure, it is quite long. Here are some of the highlights.

"When I die, bury me properly. Honour your mother. Don't forget all the trouble she went through for you when you were inside her. When she dies, bury her next to me.

"Remember the Lord every day. Don't give your face away from any poor person, and God won't turn his face away from you. If you have a lot, give a lot. If you only have a little, don't be afraid to give a little.

"If anybody works for you, pay him that same day. Don't make him wait overnight.

"Be careful in everything you do. And what you hate, do not do to anyone."

That last line, by the way, is one of the oldest written versions of what we call the Golden Rule. Turned around, it is the very rule our Lord would give, much later, in the Sermon on the Mount. Tobit got there first, in the negative, while trying to get his son out of the door.

"Give your bread to the hungry. Ask advice from every wise person. At all times bless the Lord your God."

And then, finally, the practical part. "Now, my son, there is the matter of the ten talents of silver I left with Gabael at Rages. Here is the receipt. Go and find a trustworthy man to travel with you, and I'll pay his wages, and go and fetch the money."

Tobias, who had been listening very patiently, said, "Father, I'll do everything you've said. But how am I going to get the money? Gabael doesn't know me, and I don't know him. And I don't even know the road to Media."

Fair questions. Very fair questions. Tobias is going to ask fair questions all the way through this story, and I like him for it.

"Show him the receipt," said Tobit, "and go and find someone who knows the way."

So Tobias went out of the house to look for a guide.

And he found one immediately. Standing right there, outside the door. A young man, upright and pleasant-looking, ready for a journey, as if he had been waiting for someone to come out.

The book tells us, with what I can only call a wink, that this was Raphael, the angel. And that Tobias did not know he was an angel of God.

"Where are you from, friend?" said Tobias.

"I'm one of your people," said the young man. "An Israelite. I've come here looking for work."

"Do you know the road to Media?"

"Know it? I've been there many times. I know all the roads. I've stayed with our kinsman Gabael in Rages. It's two days' walk from Ecbatana, up in the mountains."

Now, if you look at a map, it is a good deal more than two days' walk from Ecbatana to Rages. But perhaps angels walk briskly. Let's not quibble with the angel.

"Wait here," said Tobias. "I'll tell my father."

And now we get a scene that I love, because it is so completely, recognisably what an old father would do. Tobit, blind, sitting in his house, says, "Bring him in. I want to know who he is. Which tribe, which family. I'm not sending my only son off to Media with just anyone."

So the young man came in, and greeted Tobit, and Tobit, being a gentleman even in his misery, said, "What joy is left for me? I sit in darkness and can't see the light of heaven. I'm like the dead."

And the young man said, "Take courage. God is going to heal you soon. Take courage."

That's a strange thing for a hired guide to say. Tobit did not seem to notice. He went straight to business.

"My son wants to go to Media. Can you go with him? I'll pay you."

"I can go with him. I know the way."

"Then, brother, tell me: what family are you from? What tribe?"

And the angel said, "What do you need a tribe for? You need a guide."

Which, honestly, is a very fair answer.

But Tobit insisted. You can almost hear the old man folding his arms. And so the angel said: "I am Azarias, son of the great Ananias, one of your relatives."

Now, here's the thing. Tobit was delighted. "Welcome, welcome, brother! I knew your family. Ananias and Nathan, the sons of the great Shemaiah. We used to go up to Jerusalem together to worship. Good people. Your family is a good family. Welcome!"

And people sometimes ask, did the angel lie?

I'll tell you what the old Christian writers noticed. "Azarias" means "the Lord helps." And "Ananias" means "the Lord is gracious." So the angel told Tobit that he was "the Lord helps, son of the great Lord is gracious." If you were an angel sent by God to help a family, and you had to introduce yourself without frightening anybody, I'm not sure you could pick a more honest name. It is less a disguise and more a riddle, and the answer to it is written on his face all along, if only anybody could see it.

They settled the wages. A drachma a day, plus food for the road, the same as for Tobias, plus a bonus if they came back safe and well. And they got ready to go.

And Anna wept.

"Why are you sending my son away? He's the staff of our hands. He's the one who goes in and out for us. Let the money go. Who cares about the money? What God has given us to live on is enough."

And Tobit, who had so recently prayed to die, comforted her. "Don't worry, my sister. He'll go safe and come back safe. You'll see him with your own eyes on the day he comes home. Don't be afraid for them. A good angel will go with him. His journey will go well, and he'll come back in good health."

He did not know how right he was.

And then the book tells us one more thing, almost in passing. As the two young men set out, the boy's dog came along with them.

That's all it says. The dog went too.

Now, I have read the Book of Tobit many times, and I want to put it on record that we are never told the dog's name. Not once. Fifteen chapters, an archangel, a demon, a fish, a wedding, a miracle, and the dog remains anonymous throughout. Over the centuries, people have given him all kinds of names, and painters have given him all kinds of shapes, from little white lapdogs to great shaggy hounds. I'm not going to name him, out of respect for Scripture. But I will say that in my head he is medium-sized, of no particular breed, and enormously pleased to be going on an adventure.

So off they went, out of the gates of Nineveh, heading east. A young man with a receipt. An archangel with a fake name. And a dog.

They walked until evening on the first day, and they came to the river Tigris and camped there for the night.

And Tobias went down to the water to wash his feet.

And that, as you'll remember, was when the fish came up out of the river and tried to swallow his foot.

The book doesn't tell us what kind of fish it was. It just says it was a big one. Some people think it might have been a kind of large catfish, of which the Tigris had plenty, and if you have ever seen a big river catfish come up out of murky water with its mouth open, you will know that it is a sight to make anyone yell. Tobias certainly did.

"Grab it!" said the angel. "Don't let it get away!"

And Tobias, to his great credit, did not run. He grabbed the fish, and hauled it up onto the bank, wet and thrashing, and presumably the dog barked its head off the whole time. I'm adding the barking. It is not in the text. But I do not believe for a moment that it didn't happen.

"Now," said the angel, "cut it open. Take out the gall, the heart and the liver, and keep them safe. Throw away the rest of the insides. The gall, the heart and the liver are useful as medicine."

So Tobias did, and then, because they were hungry and it was getting dark and there was a large fish lying right there, they roasted some of it and ate it. The rest they salted for the road. Waste not, want not. You can take the boy out of his father's house, but you can't take his father's house out of the boy.

Then, as they went on their way, Tobias asked one of his fair questions.

"Brother Azarias, what medicine is there in the heart and the liver and the gall of a fish?"

And the angel told him. "If a man or woman is troubled by a demon or an evil spirit, you burn the heart and liver of the fish, and the smoke makes the demon flee, and it never comes back. And as for the gall, if you rub it on the eyes of someone who has white films on them, and blow on the eyes, they will be healed."

Now, I want to pause here, because this is a place where it's easy to get the wrong idea. This is not a magic recipe. The Church has never taught that fish liver is a cure for anything, and please, nobody try it at home. What happens in this story happens because God sent his angel to heal these people, and the angel chose to work through ordinary things, a fish from a river, a bit of smoke, the hands of a son on his father's face. God often works through ordinary things. Water. Bread. Oil. The hands of people who love each other. The fish is the instrument, not the source. The healing comes from God, the same way it always does.

They walked for days, through the hills and into Media, and as they came near to Ecbatana, the angel said something that made Tobias stop in the middle of the road.

"Brother Tobias."

"Yes?"

"Tonight we'll stay at the house of Raguel. He's a relative of yours. He has a daughter called Sarah, and no other children. She's sensible, and brave, and very lovely, and her father is a good man. You're her closest kinsman, so by our law you have the first right to marry her. I'll speak to her father tonight, and when we come back from Rages, we can celebrate the wedding."

Tobias did not say anything for a moment. Then he said, very carefully, the way you might talk to someone who has just suggested a picnic on a railway line:

"Brother Azarias. I have heard about this girl."

"Have you?"

"She's been married seven times. And every single husband died on the wedding night. In the bridal room. Before anything even happened. People say a demon loves her and kills anyone who comes near her. It doesn't hurt her. It just kills them." He swallowed. "And I'm my father's only son. If I die, my mother and father will die of grief, and they've got no other son to bury them."

These are, again, very fair points. I don't know about you, but if a friend I'd only known for a week suggested I marry someone with a record of seven deceased husbands, I'd want to see some kind of plan.

And the angel had one.

"Don't you remember your father's advice? He told you to marry a woman from your own people. Listen to me, brother. Don't worry about the demon. Marry her. I know that tonight she'll be given to you as your wife. When you go into the bridal room, take some of the fish's liver and heart and put them on the embers of the incense. The smell will rise, and the demon will smell it, and he'll run away and never come near her again. And then, before you're together, both of you stand up and pray. Ask the Lord of heaven to give you mercy and keep you safe. Don't be afraid. She was set apart for you before the world was made. You'll save her, and she'll go with you, and I expect you'll have children who will be like brothers to you. Don't worry."

And the book says that when Tobias heard all this, and heard that Sarah was his kinswoman, he fell in love with her, so much that his heart was set on her.

He had not met her yet. He had only heard about her. And he fell in love anyway. I think that might be the most romantic sentence in the Old Testament. Sometimes love begins with listening.

They came to Raguel's house in Ecbatana, and Sarah herself came out to meet them. She greeted them, and they greeted her, and she brought them in.

Raguel took one look at Tobias and said to his wife, "Edna, doesn't this young man look just like my cousin Tobit?"

"Where are you from, brothers?" said Edna.

"We're from the tribe of Naphtali. We're exiles in Nineveh."

"Do you know our kinsman Tobit?"

"We know him."

"Is he well?"

"He's alive, and he's well." And then Tobias added, "He's my father."

And Raguel leaped up and kissed him, and burst into tears. "Bless you, my boy! Son of a good and noble father!" And then he heard that Tobit had gone blind, and he wept again, and Edna wept, and Sarah wept, and for a little while the house was full of people crying and hugging, which is what happens in Middle Eastern families when relatives turn up unexpectedly, and frankly in most other families too.

Then Raguel killed a ram from the flock and they washed, and sat down to a great dinner.

And Tobias, who had been thinking about only one thing for days, leaned over to the angel and said, quietly, "Brother Azarias. Ask Raguel to give me Sarah."

But Raguel overheard. And Raguel was an honest man. So he said, "Eat, drink, be happy tonight, my son. No one has more right to marry my daughter than you. But I have to tell you the truth."

And he told him. Seven husbands. Seven wedding nights. "But for now, eat and drink, and the Lord will act on your behalf."

And Tobias, who was a lot braver than he had been on the road, put down his cup and said, "I won't eat or drink anything here until you settle this for me."

So Raguel said, "All right. She's yours, according to the law of Moses. Take your sister. From now on, you're her brother and she's your sister. She's given to you from today and forever. May the Lord of heaven prosper you both tonight, my son, and give you mercy and peace."

And he called for Sarah, and took her by the hand, and gave her to Tobias. And he called for a scroll and wrote out the marriage contract and sealed it. And then, finally, they ate and drank.

And Raguel said to Edna, "Prepare the other room, and take her there."

And Edna went and made up the bed in the room, and brought Sarah in. And then the book says, very simply, that Edna wept for her daughter. Then she wiped away her tears and said, "Take courage, my daughter. May the Lord of heaven give you joy instead of this sorrow. Take courage."

I think that's one of the bravest moments in the story. A mother who has done this seven times before, making up the bed again, and choosing to hope.

When they had finished eating and drinking, it was time for bed. They took Tobias to the bedroom.

And Tobias remembered what the angel had told him. He took the fish's liver and heart out of the bag where he had been keeping them, and put them on the embers of the incense.

Now, I want you to think about what that room smelled like.

Incense. Lovely. And then, on top of the incense, several-days-old fish liver.

The book tells us that the smell was so bad that the demon fled. I have no difficulty believing this. I think anyone would have fled. I think several of the neighbours probably fled. But the demon, Asmodeus, went much further than the neighbours. He fled all the way to the remotest parts of Egypt. And Raphael went after him, and caught him there, and bound him hand and foot, and that was the last that anyone ever heard of Asmodeus. Seven weddings ruined, and he was undone in the end by a nervous young man and a bad smell. Evil is very often like that, when you look at it closely. Not grand. Just mean, and a bit ridiculous, and not nearly as strong as it pretends.

And then, in the bridal room, with the windows presumably wide open, Tobias did the second thing the angel had told him.

He got up from the bed, and said to Sarah, "Sister, get up. Let's pray, and ask our Lord to have mercy on us and keep us safe."

And Sarah got up, and the two of them stood together and prayed. And this is the prayer they prayed. It's short, so I'll give it to you almost as it is:

"Blessed are you, O God of our fathers, and blessed is your name for ever and ever. Let the heavens and the whole of creation bless you for ever.

"You made Adam, and you made Eve his wife to be his helper and his support. And from the two of them the whole human race has come. You said, it is not good for the man to be alone; let us make him a helper like himself.

"And now, Lord, I am taking this sister of mine, not out of lust, but with sincerity. Have mercy on me and on her, and let us grow old together."

And together, they said, "Amen. Amen."

Let us grow old together. People have prayed those words at weddings for over two thousand years. It might be the best thing anyone can ask for, on the first night or any other.

And then they went to sleep.

Meanwhile, downstairs, poor Raguel was not sleeping.

Raguel had been through this seven times. And Raguel, who loved his daughter and was an honest and practical man, got up in the middle of the night, called his servants, and went out into the garden.

And dug a grave.

I'm sorry. It's awful. And it's also, if I'm honest, the funniest moment in the book. Because what was Raguel thinking? He was thinking: if this young man dies like the others, I'll bury him before dawn, quietly, so nobody in town finds out, so that nobody mocks my daughter, so that this poor boy is spared being a joke. It's kind, in its way. It's also deeply, deeply pessimistic. And it means that while Tobias and Sarah are upstairs praying to grow old together, her father is in the garden with a shovel.

When the grave was dug, Raguel went back in and said to Edna, "Send one of the maids to look in. If he's dead, we'll bury him, and nobody needs to know."

So they lit a lamp, and the maid opened the door very quietly, and went in, and looked.

They were both asleep. Peacefully, side by side. Snoring, possibly. The text doesn't say snoring. I like to think so.

The maid came out and told them, "He's alive."

And Raguel, standing there in his nightclothes, with mud on his hands from digging a grave he didn't need, burst into a prayer of joy. "Blessed are you, O God, with every pure blessing! You have had mercy on two only children! Show them mercy, Lord, and bring their lives to a good end, in happiness and mercy!"

And then, and this is my favourite detail of all, he told his servants to fill the grave in before dawn.

Before anyone could see it.

I picture the servants out in the garden in the grey light, shovelling very fast, and Raguel hissing at them to hurry up, and the dog, who has somehow found its way into the garden, very interested in the whole operation. The dog is not in the text at this point. But dogs are always interested in digging, and I am sure he was there.

Then came the wedding feast. And Raguel, who had been ready to bury his son-in-law the night before, was now so overjoyed that he insisted the celebration last fourteen days. Fourteen days! He made Tobias swear not to leave until it was over. And he said, "Half of everything I have is yours right now, and when Edna and I are gone, the other half will be yours as well. Take heart, my son. I'm your father, and Edna is your mother. We belong to you and your sister, from now on and forever."

But there was still the small matter of the ten talents of silver.

So Tobias called the angel and said, "Brother Azarias, take four servants and two camels with you, and go to Rages. Find Gabael, give him the receipt, and get the money. And please bring Gabael back with you to the wedding. You know my father will be counting the days, and if I'm even one day late, he'll be worried sick. And you can see what Raguel's made me swear. I can't leave."

So the angel went, with four servants and two camels, to Rages in the mountains. He found Gabael, and gave him the receipt, and Gabael brought out the money-bags, still with their seals on them, twenty years later, just as Tobit had left them. And they loaded them onto the camels, and they all came back together to the wedding.

And when Gabael met Tobias, he blessed him, and said, "Good and noble son of a good and noble father, a man who was righteous and gave alms. May the Lord give you the blessing of heaven, and your wife, and your wife's father and mother. Blessed be God, because I've seen my cousin Tobit's son, and he looks just like him."

Everyone in this story keeps saying how much Tobias looks like his father. I think it's because the book wants us to understand something. The son is becoming the father. The good man's goodness is being handed on.

Meanwhile, back in Nineveh, a blind man and his wife were counting the days.

Tobit knew how long the journey should take there and back, and when the day came and went and his son had not come home, he began to worry. "Maybe he's been held up there. Maybe Gabael has died and there's no one to give him the money."

And Anna, who had never wanted him to go in the first place, said, "My son is dead. He's gone. I'll never see him again." And she began to weep.

Every day, she went out and sat by the road he would come home on, and watched, and wouldn't eat. And every night, she came back and wept, and couldn't sleep.

And Tobit kept saying, "Hush, don't worry. He's fine. Something's held them up. The man he went with is trustworthy, and he's one of our own. Don't grieve, my sister. He'll be here soon."

But he was worrying too.

When the fourteen days of the wedding were over, Tobias went to Raguel and said, "Father, let me go now. My parents must think they'll never see me again."

And Raguel tried to persuade him to stay, but finally he gave in, and he gave Tobias his wife Sarah, and half of everything he owned, servants and oxen and sheep and donkeys and camels, and clothes and money and household goods. And he and Edna said goodbye to them. Raguel said, "Goodbye, my son, may the Lord of heaven give you a good journey. And may I see your children before I die." And Edna said to Tobias, "My dear son and brother, may the Lord bring you safely home. I'm entrusting my daughter to you. Don't do anything to make her sad, ever."

Which is the most mother-in-law sentence ever spoken, and also, a very good piece of advice.

So the great caravan set out from Ecbatana, back towards Nineveh, slowly, because there were sheep and oxen and a newly married bride, and nobody can hurry sheep.

And as they got near Nineveh, the angel said, "Brother Tobias, you know how we left your father. Let's run on ahead of your wife and the others, and get the house ready for them. And bring the gall of the fish with you."

So the two of them went ahead.

And the dog went with them.

Now here is a lovely thing. In the Greek text of Tobit, the dog just goes along, the way dogs do. But when Saint Jerome translated the book into Latin, in the version that the Western Church read for more than a thousand years, he added a detail. He says that the dog ran on ahead of them, as if he were bringing the good news, and showed his joy by wagging his tail.

So the first sign Anna had, sitting by the road, looking down it as she had every day for weeks, was a dog. A dog running towards her, flat out, tail going like a flag. And then, behind the dog, two young men walking. And she looked, and she looked, and she knew one of them.

She ran into the house and shouted to her husband, "Your son is coming! And the man who went with him!"

Before they reached the house, the angel said to Tobias, quietly, "I know your father's eyes will be opened. Put the fish's gall on his eyes. The medicine will make the white films shrink and peel off his eyes, and your father will look up and see the light."

Anna ran to her son and threw her arms around his neck and said, "I've seen you, my child. Now I can die happy." And she wept.

And Tobit got up, and came stumbling out to the courtyard door, feeling his way along the wall. And Tobias went to meet him, with the gall of the fish in his hand. He took hold of his father, and he blew into his eyes, and he said, "Take courage, father." And he put the medicine on, and it stung, and Tobit rubbed his eyes. And Tobias peeled the white films from the corners of his father's eyes with his own two hands.

And Tobit saw his son.

He threw his arms around his neck, and wept, and said, "I see you, my son, light of my eyes!"

And then he said, "Blessed be God. Blessed be his great name. Blessed be all his holy angels. May his holy name be blessed for ever. Because he struck me, and he has had mercy on me. And now I see my son Tobias."

Light of my eyes. That's what he called him. He had been sitting in the dark for years, and the first thing he saw when the light came back was the face of his son.

Then Tobias told his father everything. The fish, the journey, the money, and, oh yes, by the way, he had got married. And Tobit, who had sent his son off to collect a debt and got back a daughter-in-law, went out to the gate of Nineveh to meet Sarah. And all the people who saw him walking along, striding out, with no one leading him by the hand, were amazed. And Tobit told them all, out loud, in the street, how God had had mercy on him and opened his eyes.

When he got to Sarah, he blessed her and said, "Welcome, my daughter. Blessed be your God who has brought you to us. Blessed be your father, and blessed be my son Tobias, and blessed be you, my daughter. Come into your home, in health and blessing and joy. Come in, my daughter."

Then there was another wedding feast, for seven days this time, and Ahikar the nephew came, and everyone in Nineveh who was one of their people came, and I imagine Anna's neighbours, the ones who had laughed at Tobit for burying the dead, came too, and had the decency to look a little sheepish about it.

When the celebrations were over, Tobit called his son and said, "My son, we need to pay the man who went with you. And we should give him something extra."

And Tobias said, "Father, how much? Even if I give him half of everything he brought back with me, it wouldn't be too much. He led me there and back safely. He cured my wife. He got the money. He healed you. Let's give him half."

And Tobit agreed. That's an astonishing offer, when you think about it. Half of everything. But that is what grateful people do, when they finally understand how much they've been given.

So they called the angel in, and they said, "Take half of everything you brought back, and go in peace."

And the angel took them both aside, privately, and he said:

"Bless God. Give him thanks in front of everyone for all the good things he has done for you. It's good to keep the secret of a king, but the works of God should be shouted from the rooftops. Do good, and evil will not find you. Prayer with fasting is good, and almsgiving with righteousness is better. It's better to give alms than to store up gold. Almsgiving saves from death and washes away every sin.

"I'm going to tell you the whole truth. I won't hide anything from you.

"When you prayed, Tobit, you and Sarah, it was I who brought the memory of your prayer before the glory of the Lord. And when you buried the dead, I was there with you too. When you got up from your dinner without hesitating, and went out to bury that man, I was with you. And now God has sent me to heal you and your daughter-in-law Sarah.

"I am Raphael, one of the seven angels who stand ready and enter before the glory of the Lord."

And they were both terrified, and fell on their faces.

And Raphael said, "Don't be afraid. Peace be with you. Bless God for ever. When I was with you, I wasn't there because of any favour of mine, but because of the will of God. Bless him every day. Sing his praise. All those days you saw me eating and drinking, I didn't really eat or drink anything; what you saw was a vision. And now, bless the Lord on earth and give thanks to God. I'm going back up to the one who sent me. Write down everything that has happened to you."

And he went up. And when they stood up again, they couldn't see him anymore.

Think about that. All those days on the road. All those fair questions Tobias asked. The fish, the camp by the Tigris, the conversations about girls and demons and fathers. And it was an archangel, the whole time. One of the ones who stand before the throne of God. Walking along beside a nervous young man and a dog with no name, carrying salted fish in a bag, and calling himself "the Lord helps, son of the Lord is gracious."

And the thing that strikes me most is what Raphael says about Tobit. I was there when you buried the dead. Tobit had thought, during all those years of blindness and poverty, that God had forgotten him. That his good works had come to nothing. That even his own wife could see it. And all the time, every single time he had got up from his dinner to go and do the right thing, an angel had been standing beside him, and had carried it up to God.

That's not just Tobit's story. The Church has always taught that God gives each of us an angel, to guard and guide us, from the beginning of our lives to the end. Most of us will never see ours. Most of us will never be told its name. But it's there, in the dark, by the courtyard wall. And it sees what we do when no one else is looking.

The book ends quietly, the way a good bedtime story should.

Tobit sang a long hymn of praise to God, which is the thirteenth chapter of his book, all about how God punishes and has mercy, and how one day Jerusalem would be rebuilt with sapphires and emeralds and its streets would sing alleluia. It's lovely. It goes on a while. Tobit had a lot of praising to catch up on.

And then he lived a long and peaceful life. He was able to see for the rest of his days. He kept giving alms, and he kept fearing and praising God. When he was very old, he called Tobias and his grandsons, and he gave them one more piece of advice, which was, more or less, "Get out of Nineveh. The prophets have said it will fall. Go to Media, where it's safe." And then he died in peace, at a great age, and he was buried with honour in Nineveh. And when Anna died, Tobias buried her next to him, just as his father had asked, all those years ago, before he set out on the road.

And then Tobias and Sarah took their children and went back to Ecbatana, to Raguel and Edna, and looked after them in their old age, and buried them too, with honour. And Tobias lived to be very old, and saw his grandchildren, and before he died he heard the news that Nineveh had fallen, just as his father had said. And he praised God for all of it.

They grew old together, Tobias and Sarah. Just as they'd prayed, that first night, with the windows open and the fish smell drifting out across the garden. Let us grow old together. And they did.

The old commentators say that the Book of Tobit is about many things. About marriage, and how it begins with prayer. About almsgiving, and how nothing given to the poor is ever lost. About honouring your father and mother. About how God hears the prayers of people who think they've been forgotten.

But I think, at bedtime, it's mostly about this. You are not walking alone. Not on the road to Media, not by the river at dusk, not in the dark room where you can't see anything. There is someone walking with you, whose name means "the Lord helps." You may not know who he is. He may seem like an ordinary companion. But he knows the road. He knows every road. And he will bring you home.

Some notes, for the curious.

The Book of Tobit comes to us in several ancient versions, mostly in Greek, with fragments in Aramaic and Hebrew found among the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran. Tonight's telling follows the longer Greek text, which is the one most modern Catholic Bibles translate. The detail of the dog running ahead and wagging his tail comes from Saint Jerome's Latin translation, the Vulgate.

Catholics read Tobit as one of the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament, and Orthodox Christians count it among the books of their Old Testament as well. Many Protestant Bibles leave it out, or print it in a separate section, so if you've never come across it, that may be why.

Everything that happens in tonight's story is in the book. The fish, the gall, the grave in the garden, the fourteen days of feasting, and Raphael's words at the end are all there. What we added are small things: some of the conversations on the road, the barking, the speculation about catfish, and the narrator's very strong opinion that the dog was medium-sized and enormously pleased to be there.

Saint Raphael is one of three angels named in the Catholic Bible, with Saint Michael and Saint Gabriel. Catholics keep the feast of the three archangels on the twenty-ninth of September. The Orthodox Church honours them, with all the bodiless powers of heaven, at the Synaxis of the Archangels on the eighth of November. Raphael has long been asked to pray for travellers, for the sick, for people looking for a husband or wife, and, for obvious reasons, for people who work with fish.

That's the story of Tobias, Sarah and the Archangel Raphael for tonight. His feast is on the twenty-ninth of September in the Catholic Church and the eighth of November in the Orthodox Church. Thank you for listening to Saints by Candlelight. If you enjoyed it, share it with someone who could use a gentle story at the end of a long day.

And as you go to sleep, here are the words that Tobias and Sarah prayed, on the first night of their life together:

Blessed are you, O God of our fathers, and blessed is your name for ever and ever. Let the heavens and the whole of creation bless you for ever. Have mercy on us, and let us grow old together.

Goodnight, and God bless.

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