There are few topics of greater interest to my 15 and 16-year-old students than that of romantic relationships. Children want to be valued, seen, affirmed and loved; and they think this will happen, most powerfully, in a romantic relationship. Often between classes, when I sit at my desk, with the chatter of kids bubbling up from their chairs around me, I overhear low-volume conversations about blossoming romantic interests. My kids generally assume that this concept falls outside the shade of the biblical tree. After all, what does God know about romantic love?

To such students, I say, as I said a few weeks ago: consider the Book of Tobit. One of her central themes is the mystery of human love and marriage. The book enables us to see in a resounding way that the Bible has much to say about romantic love. Far more than one might imagine. This book treats, in novella fashion, of the blossoming of love between a young man and a young woman, the drama of demonic influence in this sphere, the intervention of the angelic, and the ultimate spiritual significance of the union between a man and a woman.

First a word of background. The biblical novella of Tobit (novella is a mini novel) was left out of the Protestant canon of Scripture for reasons I won’t go into here. I will merely state, as a matter of textual observation, that St. Luke was familiar with the text of Tobit, for he clearly has it in mind as he wrote his great parable of the Prodigal Son (compare the return of the son in Luke 15:20 with that of Tobit 11:5-6 & 9). Thus, at a minimum, I want to assert that the text is ancient and is considered, for good reason, to be inspired by more than half of Christendom.

Let us move on to the text. Our love story begins in Chapter 3. And it begins in tragedy.

Here, we meet Sarah, our female protagonist. She is laboring along a difficult path, one not unlike the path of some young women today. She is seeking love, yearning for it with all her feminine heart, yet she is thwarted in this by the influence of the demonic; she is the victim of a demonic possession. A demon has claimed her as his own, such that, on the night of her wedding, it attacks and kills her betrothed, before the marriage is consummated. This happens 7 times to Sarah. 7 suitors die and, by the time we meet her, she is distraught; she feels cursed. Her own servants see her as condemned by God; they ridicule her, declaring that never will she marry, never will she know the joys of family life.

This is the drama that opens up in Chapter 3. The grief from 7 dead husbands, the mockery she endures by her servants, the loneliness of her feminine heart: this is all too much for Sarah. She prays a heartfelt prayer that God would deliver her from her life of sorrow. She prays He would take her life – or deliver her from her misery.

This prayer of Sarah is heard in the courts of heaven and God dispatches the angel Raphael (disguised as an itinerant Israelite named Azariah) to attend to her plight. Here I streamline a complex story line: Raphael identifies a young man, Tobiah, whom God has long ago intended to be Sarah’s partner in life. Tobiah is making a journey; Raphael befriends and, in human disguise, accompanies him. As they journey one day by the Tigris River, he instructs Tobiah to catch a large, dangerous fish, gut it and preserve its heart and liver. If burned, he says, these organs will emit an odor that is mysteriously potent in driving away demons. Tobiah complies with the curious counsel of the stranger.

Raphael then proceeds to speak to Tobiah about a young woman, our Sarah. This Sarah, he says, is an Israelite and a member of Tobiah’s distant klan, so she would be a suitable spouse for him. Tobiah has heard of her, knows the stories of the 7 dead husbands and is less than enthusiastic about being the 8th. But Raphael explains that Tobiah now holds, in his leather pouch, the remedy for Sarah’s demonic curse. That the heart and liver of the fish he carries with him, once burned in the presence of Sarah, will definitively drive away the demon that harasses her and will free her from its curse.

“Do not be afraid” to take Sarah as your wife, concludes Raphael, “for she was set apart for you before the world existed. You will save her, and she will go with you.” (Tob 6:18)

She was set apart for you before the world existed. These profound words rise from earth as though incensed to heaven. To date, in Scripture, they are the most direct articulation of God’s hand in human marriage. They echo and deepen other words on this theme. The word in Genesis, for example, that God made Eve as a companion in love for Adam (Gen. 2). The story, several generations later, of God’s hand in selecting and blessing the union of Isaac and Rebekah (Gen. 24). The fact that Jesus, in John’s Gospel, performs his first miracle by transfiguring the wine that enlivens a human wedding (Jn. 2). And a few decades later, Paul’s word envisioning Christian marriage as an image of the bond between Christ and the Church (Eph. 5). But never, before this time, have we heard an angel declare that two human beings were foreseen and chosen by God – as spouses for one another – before the existence of the world. It is a staggering revelation.

Is this Scriptural hyperbole or is it the development and unfolding of divine revelation as relates to human marriage?

Well, let’s consider more closely the Genesis account of marriage. There we see man and woman have the mission of imaging together God’s Trinitarian life, God’s love lived in communion.

“God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Gen 1:27)

What’s revealed here, in the Bible’s typical economy of phrasing, is a vocation with an eternal dimension. A man and woman, together, are called to image the divine nature; called, in other words, to reflect a reality that is eternal. To image God is not spoken of man individually; it is man and woman together who form an image of God’s divine nature. Seen through the lens of what we now know, we know that this divine nature is the Trinitarian nature; it is love between persons; it is love in communion.

Man and woman, Genesis is saying, have an eternal call. If the telos of marriage is eternal, should it surprise us that those who will fulfill it occupy God’s thought and attention before time came to be? No – it is not surprising. And so we may say that the book of Tobit is merely developing the inner logic of the revelation of Christian marriage.

As an aside: marriage is not the only path called to image the divine nature. Human relationships within the Church have this call as well. In his final high priestly prayer, Jesus prays that his disciples – and all those who believe through their word (which means all of us) – might live in the same unity that Jesus lives with the Father. What is the unity between Father and Son? It is the consubstantial unity of the Divine Nature, the Trinitarian union of persons in love. Jesus is praying that the Church live this unity in Him, as He lives it in the Father. (See John 17:20-24). And so we can detect here an echo of Paul’s notion that the love between a man and his wife are an image of the love between Christ and the Church. Because both – marriage and relationships within the Church – are called to reflect and actually do reflect the love between the persons of the Trinity. They are an icon, on earth, of the Divine Nature.

Back to our story, Tobiah hears these things from Raphael and believes them. His soul is moved deeply. His heart goes out to the one who has been chosen for him before time by God:

“When Tobiah heard Raphael’s words . . . he loved [Sarah] deeply, and his heart was truly set on her.” (Tob 6:18)

Together they journey to the home of Sarah’s father, Raguel. Raphael introduces Tobiah as the son of Raguel’s kinsman, Tobit. Sarah and Tobiah meet under the same charged circumstances as Isaac and Rebekah meeet; it is a meeting that pulses with the grandeur of divine love. The two fall in love – a love that falls on earth like a sudden strike of lightning – and they are given in marriage. On their wedding night, Tobiah burns the fish heart and liver; it drives away the demon that has, for years, harassed Sarah. From outside the wedding chamber, Raphael seizes the fleeing demon, binds him and casts him into darkness. The next day, the family rejoices that Tobiah and Sarah have been united in marriage and that the demonic curse has been lifted. And together the two of them form a union that speaks, on earth, of the love and life and fruitfulness of the God who created them.

. . .

Do you believe God has set aside someone to be your life partner?

I pose this question to my students and then add: if you believed that, would it change the way you live now?


Then I close the class with a prayer, written in the voice of 15-year-olds pondering the meaning of human love, a love they now realize may entail far more than they previously thought.

O Holy Trinity, Tobiah discovers that you have a plan for marriage. That you set apart Sarah for him, so they could both journey together toward salvation, which is Theosis, participation in your divine life. I have never really thought marriage could be a vocation from heaven. Help me to believe that. And to prepare myself to be a good partner for the person you have set aside for me. A co-icon, a co-image with him (or her) of your Divine Nature. Amen.