Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
Tobiah's marriage is celebrated in Nineveh with another wedding feast, this one just the usual seven days, and this feast also celebrates his safe return and Tobit's healing.
When the celebration is over, it's time to pay Tobiah's traveling companion and bid him farewell.
Tobiah and Tobit talk about what to give him.
The son proposes to give him half of everything they brought back.
After all, thanks to him, Tobit is back safe, or Tobiah is back safe and sound.
Tobit was healed, and Tobiah and Sarah were married.
He's done much more than he was hired to do.
Tobit, with his typical generosity, agrees that it is right to give him half, and so they call him to let him know.
Speaking privately to the two men, Raphael now reveals who he really is.
He won't be needing that reward because there's another kind of logic at work here.
He has not helped them for material gain, but because God so ordered it.
Some of the things he says merit comment.
He says, do good, and evil will not find its way to you.
But Tobit did good and wound up in exile.
He had to flee his home for a time, and then he became blind.
Did not evil find its way to him?
No, because for those who love God, all things work together for good.
In exile, he became a wealthy man, and his son found a good wife.
Because he was blind, he prayed, and Raphael was sent to bring healing, after which things were much better than they were before.
Both Tobit's advice to his son before the journey and Raphael's teaching after it insist especially on almsgiving.
The latter says prayer and fasting are good, but better than either is almsgiving accompanied with by righteousness.
The problem in today's gospel is that the scribes do not accompany their almsgiving with righteousness.
But when it is accompanied by righteousness, when it is a true expression of charity, then it is of great value.
These prayer, fasting, and almsgiving or prayer penance and works of mercy are the three principal works of those who serve God.
Works of mercy summarized as almsgiving are particularly important because God is merciful with the merciful.
Christ also puts the accent on works of mercy when he describes the judgment in terms of whether or not individuals did works of corporal mercy to the least of their brethren.
Works of mercy are exercises of charity toward neighbor, where charity becomes very concrete, where it's harder to deceive ourselves about whether or not we love.
As the widow in today's gospel shows us, it's not necessary to be wealthy in order for one's alms to be pleasing to God.
They're not measured in terms of monetary value, but in terms of the love, in terms of the generosity with which they're given.
After this teaching, Raphael reveals some secrets.
First, he explains something of the secret working of providence in Tobit's life.
When he and Sarah prayed, and likewise when he did works of mercy at great personal risk, Raphael presented the record of his prayer or good work before God.
St. John of the Cross speaks of the mediation of angels in our prayer, and we see angels bringing messages to or from God in scripture.
Now we have the mediation also of Our Lady in the New Testament.
Angels taught the prophets, and in the book of Revelation, an angel offers the prayer of the holy ones on an altar before the throne of God.
It was also Raphael who was sent to put Tobit to the test.
So as Tobit says in his song of praise, God scourges and then has mercy.
But he did so, at least in Tobit's case, through the ministry of Raphael.
His second secret is that he is an angel, and not only that, but one of the seven angels who enter and serve before the glory of the Lord.
This encounter with the holy shakes the two men, and they fall prostrate, but the angel reassures them and tells them that he did all this in obedience to God, it is him they should praise.
They are also to write down what has happened to them.
This would be the origin of the book of Tobit, which begins in the first person, but has obviously undergone a lot of editing over the centuries, resulting in multiple versions.
Finally, the angel departs, leaving them to praise God.
We use parts of Tobit's song of praise as the responsorial song.
He says, in the land of my exile, I praise him and show his power and majesty to a sinful nation.
By praising God, we make known who he is and what he can do.
People in Nineveh had seen Tobit blind and impoverished.
Now they saw him healthy and wealthy again, and he declares that this is all God's doing.
If, as Saint Bede says, Tobit's blindness represents that of the Jewish people, then his song of praise represents the praise they will give when they finally come to Christ.
So he comments, the Jewish people converted at the end of the world to faith will have many teachers and prophetic men who will inflame the minds of their neighbors to heavenly desires, while the joys of the heavenly country resound to them frequently and without ceasing.
The book concludes with an epilogue that's not included in the lectionary.
Both Tobit and his son have long and happy lives after all the trials that they passed through.
When Tobit is about to die, he tells Tobiah and his sons to leave Nineveh after their mother dies, because what the prophets said about the city will soon be fulfilled.
They do what he said, moving to Ectabana, where they live with Sarah's parents until the end of their lives.
There they hear of the defeat of Nineveh and their lives in peace and happiness.
Saint Bede says that as Tobit warned his son and grandsons of the fall of Nineveh, so the great teachers among the converted Jewish people toward the end of time will warn their relatives that they are about to depart from the world, because the world is already nearing its end and the good things of the future life are about to come.
They will say, leave the desires of this world and earthly life and seek heavenly things with all your mind, for it is certain that there is such a multitude of wicked people, so great a transgression of the precepts of God throughout the world, that it can be terminated in no other way than by the extermination of the world itself.
As Tobiah found his parents-in-law in good old age and took care of them, so our Lord, says Saint Bede, takes care of those whom he has known to persevere in good works in safety.
When Tobiah died, all his relatives buried him, and Saint Bede says that this signifies the faith of the whole world, when our Lord, with his whole body, which is the church which he redeemed, enters into eternal rest.
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.

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Ave Maria.