 If you've been going to Daily Mass, you've been hearing the book of Tobit, and it's a pretty long, a lot of long readings. It's a wonderful, wonderful book. It's delightfully weird. And I encourage all of you to read the story of the book of Tobit. The book of Tobit tells us something. It tells us that God sees us, that God hears us, and that God loves us. Tobit is situated at the time of the exile, and just the brief history of it. David was the king, Solomon was his son, but Solomon had many wives, and the kingdom fractured. There was the northern kingdom of Israel, and the southern kingdom of Judah, which is where Jerusalem was. And a lot of the focus of Scripture goes into that southern kingdom where Jerusalem is, but Tobit's one of the few stories we have about a faithful family in the northern kingdom. In fact, two faithful families. These are faithful Jews trying to live in a pagan culture. And in the beginning of the book of Tobit, Tobit buries dead people. That wasn't something that the pagans of Nineveh did, but it was part of the laws, part of the Torah. And so being faithful, when somebody died, he would get up and he would bury the body. This was a holy and righteous act. Now, because he touched a dead person, also part of the law is that he couldn't go back into his house until he went through purification. So he buried the body and he didn't sleep in his home. He slept outside. And while he was sleeping outside, this is where it gets weird, some bird droppings fell on his eyes and blinded him. Yeah, it's gross, right? Meanwhile, in another part of Nineveh is another faithful family, Miguel and his daughter, Sarah. And unlike many of the other unfaithful families that are starting to marry into pagan culture, they want to keep the Jewish faith alive. And so Miguel tries to find for Sarah a Jewish husband. And he finds actually seven of them, all of whom are killed by a demon on their wedding night. Yeah, it's a tough story. And I think for both of them, in the natural level and in the supernatural level, they had every cause to complain to the Lord. They were just trying to be faithful. And I think we can feel this way too, right? I think of a famous quote of Teresa of Avila. She was on horseback doing mission work of God. They went into a river and the horse bucked. And she fell off the horse. Soaking wet, almost drowned, almost stomped by the horse. And as she got out of the river, she said, Lord, if this is how you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few of them. We can feel that way, right? You know, Tobit can say, like, Lord, all I was trying to do was something good and now I'm blinded. And Miguel could say, all I was trying to do was set up my daughter with a good Jewish man and now all these men have died. In all of our lives, we can have these moments, right? I think in my own life, probably the most powerful moment of this for me was, you know, getting married and coming out of Steubenville. I was in Orlando, Florida and I really felt a call of the Lord to drop everything and to come study at Franciscan. And so I did. I found a wonderful woman. We got married. I was off to do youth ministry. I had a number of really good job offers. I took the worst one because I felt the Lord was calling me to this. And so here we are in upstate New York. We're pregnant, which is so exciting. Everything's going great. And midway through the pregnancy, there's no more heartbeat. And I just remember thinking, Lord, I'm doing everything for you. Like, what's up with this? And that's part of our spiritual lives, my brothers and sisters. It's like mine, amen. All of us have this thing where we're like, Lord, I thought if I gave everything to you that, you know, there wouldn't be sickness. People wouldn't die. My car wouldn't break down. I wouldn't lose my job. The list goes on and on and on. And in these moments, we can feel like, Lord, do you see me? Do you hear me? Do you care? But the Lord sees us. The Lord hears us. And the Lord loves us. In the story of Tobit, he hears the prayers of Tobias, of Tobit and Sarah. And he sends an angel. Not just like any, you know, Schmo angel, not like, you know, Clarence, second-class angel, right? Like, he sends an archangel who's in disguise the whole time. And Tobit sends his son Tobias off to this other family. And when Tobias sees Sarah, his heart leaps and he says, I need to marry her like right now. And Miguel says, yes, praise God. I believe in this. You can get married tonight. And as they go off to the wedding chamber, Miguel, this faithful man, starts digging a grave for Tobias. He's been there. He's been there done that, right? He's been burned before. He's ready for this one. How often do we do that, though? You know, we can actually get so used to failure that we're just sure that's going to happen. Where's the shovel? And we keep that shovel by our door. Well, Lord answered the prayer of Tobias and Sarah. They got married, no death, no demon. Raphael fought it. They go back to Tobit. Raphael gives Tobias a cure that he wipes on Tobit's eyes, and now Tobit can see. And at the end, this is the end of the book that we hear today, that Tobit's eyes are healed. Tobias and Sarah are married. And Raphael pulls Tobit into Tobias, the side, and does one of those, aha, I'm an angel, moments. And the message was, Angel Raphael was saying, like, he heard your prayer. And look, I've been with you this whole time. And maybe you just didn't realize it. I think for all of us that have gone through these times of suffering and struggle, too, you know, even though they look back at that very difficult time in my life, at the time when at the moment I thought God was the least present, he was actually the most present. He was there holding me, holding my wife, bringing us together. It was still tragic, it was still suffering, but he was there in the midst of that suffering because that's who our God is, my brothers and sisters. You see, we want God to get rid of our suffering. He does the opposite. He embraces it. He comes in the midst of it. He walks us through our suffering because he sees us, because he hears us, because he loves us. He answers our prayer in a way we never thought. We wanted God to free us from suffering and sin, and we wanted him to kind of snap his fingers and do it, and instead he became flesh and dwelt among us. He took on flesh so that he could feel pain. He took on our life so that he could experience death. You know, God hates death even more than we do. That's why he came to conquer it. That's why he came to overcome it. And what he shows us is that for all the good Fridays in our lives, there's an Easter Sunday. He hears us. He loves us. Even if it's a small thing, and that's what's so beautiful about today's gospel. You know, Jesus was sitting by the treasury and he's watching people pour all this money into the treasury. And then he sees a widow. And it's always hard to be a widow. I know some of you are widows. I think in that culture earlier it was even more difficult because it was such a patriarchal culture if you were a widow. You know, scriptures always talk about taking care of the widows and the orphans because they were the most vulnerable in the society at that time. And he sees a widow just throwing in a few pennies. I wonder what was going on in her mind. I wonder if she was thinking, man, look at all these rich people, powerful people, these holy people, look at all the money they're given. I have nothing. I always worry at conferences that maybe sometimes you might think that about people on stage or about me. You know, we might be really talented in speaking or singing. Talent does not equal holiness, not in one bit. And sometimes it's easy to look at somebody on a stage or on a screen and say, wow, they've got so much to give and I have nothing. The Lord delights in the gift. He doesn't care how much it is. He delights in the fullness of what we give because he wants us to give it all. To give it all to him. It's all about pleasing him. It's all about drawing near his heart and receiving his blessing. He is present. He is faithful. He is good. This is what we heard yesterday. This is what's reinforced in our scriptures today. That he sees you. He knows what you're going through right now. He hears your prayer. Even if you feel like you've prayed it a thousand times, it's not falling on deaf ears. And he loves you. Even if he's not answering your prayer in the way you want or the way you think it should be answered. Because he's God. Today we gather at the altar. We have an opportunity to receive Jesus body, blood, soul and divinity. He answered our prayer of being in communion with him in a fascinating way. Not only did he become flesh and dwell among us, but he remains present among us. And he humbles himself to become small enough that we can receive him even in our mouths. It's the fullness of God. It's not just a piece of God. It's all of God. All the body, blood, soul and divinity. And he gives himself to us his strength for the journey. These sufferings that we feel in this life in Saint Paul referred to them as light and momentary troubles. And here was a guy who was shipwrecked, flogged, beaten, light and momentary troubles. These sufferings that we have in life just remind us that this world is actually not our home. That we were made for a place where there is no more sorrow, no more sickness and no more death. And as we continue on this pilgrimage of hope, this pilgrimage of love, he gives himself to us as bread for the journey, as hope and salvation. Brothers and sisters, as we receive Christ in the Eucharist this day, may we ask that he would open our eyes. May he give us the strength to look back in those dark times in our life and see Jesus present in the midst of it. That when we were weeping, he was weeping with us. When we were rejoicing, he is rejoicing with us. And for all of us he is calling us together to this altar to celebrate his love. You are seen by God. Your prayers are heard and God loves you. Jesus give us the grace to hear your voice and say yes to you and to walk with you even in difficult times knowing that for all of our Good Fridays Sunday is coming.