Tobit has basically given up hope for this world:
For it is better for me to die
than to endure so much misery in life,
and to hear these insults!
And so has Sarah:
It is far better for me not to hang myself,
but to beg the Lord to have me die,
so that I need no longer live to hear such insults.
They both cry out to God.
Tobit prays,
And now, O Lord, may you be mindful of me,
and look with favor upon me.
And Sarah prays,
Blessed are you, O Lord, merciful God,
and blessed is your holy and honorable name.
They pray and entrust themselves to God. They know they can only find refuge in him from the trouble they face. But the specific deliverance for which they pray isn't what God has in mind. He does not simply offer them death as an escape from the perils of this life.
He is not God of the dead but of the living.
What God wants to give his people is more life. He wants us to have life in abundance (cf. Joh. 10:10). Indeed, the resurrection is not an escape to the netherworld. It is an even greater fullness of all the things that make life God. It is not fewer possibilities but more. It is not a muted gray netherworld but a place of dynamic and vibrant life. God wants to point Tobit and Sarah toward this reality. It is interesting how he does it. They can't have a proper hope of heaven when they abandon hope in the goodness of this life. So God uses each for the other to reveal to them that, as Samwise Gamgee says, "There is some good in this world, Mr Frodo, and it's worth fighting for." The Communion of Saints know this. That is why they are able to actively intercede for us. They value even the goodness here below. A love which is too heavenly minded to be any earthly good is imperfect and partial. It is truly marvelous the way in which God brings these two together in order to deliver them from their individual sufferings and reveal this truth:
At that very time,
the prayer of these two suppliants
was heard in the glorious presence of Almighty God.
So Raphael was sent to heal them both:
to remove the cataracts from Tobit’s eyes,
so that he might again see God’s sunlight;
and to marry Raguel’s daughter Sarah to Tobit’s son Tobiah,
and then drive the wicked demon Asmodeus from her.
In you I trust; let me not be put to shame,
let not my enemies exult over me.
No one who waits for you shall be put to shame;
those shall be put to shame who heedlessly break faith.
If there is no marriage in heaven it is not because heaven has given up on an impractical and unworkable idea. It is because it must give way to something greater in the presence of "the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob"
Let us long, not for escape, but for fullness as we lift our souls to God!
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