Spiritual Meaning

IN ANTHONY’S time during the month of September the Office readings were taken from the Book of Job in the first two weeks, from Tobias in the third, and from Judith and Esther in the fourth. We have considered Job in previous years, and so this time round I want to look at our Saint’s handling of the other three books. In fact, these three are not very well known, although they contain stories that have inspired artists and writers over the centuries.

Two of the three do not occur in the Hebrew Bible, but only in the Greek, while Esther has both a Hebrew version and a longer Greek version. For Catholics, of course, all three are canonical and form part of God’s Word. That does not mean that they are ‘historical’ in the way that, for instance, the Books of Kings or Maccabees are historical. Modern scholarship situates their composition in the Maccabean period (that is, maybe two hundred years before our Lord), whereas the action of the stories is set in the time of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires, some four or five centuries earlier. They resemble ‘historical novels’, written at a time of trouble to give moral guidance and encouragement. They are full of action and vivid characterisation (though with a number of anachronisms that give their true status away).

 

Tobias

 

Old Tobias (also called Tobit) is one of the Israelites of the Northern Kingdom exiled under the Assyrian Empire to Niniveh. He is depicted as a pious and observant Jew, but despite this he becomes blind. He sends his son, young Tobias, to reclaim some money owed him by a kinsman living in Media. Tobias sets out, accompanied by the angel Raphael, who appears as a man. On the journey, Tobias obtains a cure for his father’s blindness, and a bride for himself, but only after overcoming the demon Asmodeus.

Anthony loved this story, and uses it in several of his sermons. It was easy to interpret it as an allegory of the Christian story. Old Tobias is fallen humanity, blinded and impoverished. Young Tobias is Christ, the Son of Man who is sent by his Divine Father into the world, to cure humanity and to win himself a bride, the Church, by overcoming the devil. One curious feature that I have not been able to explain is that, whereas in the Scripture the mother of Tobias is called Anna, and the girl he marries is called Sarah, Anthony gives the name ‘Anna’ to both of them. A sign that even Anthony could misremember at times!

 

Judith

 

The story of Judith is set in the time of ‘Nebuchadnezzar the king of the Assyrians’, although in fact the said king ruled in Babylon, not Niniveh! He sends his general, Holofernes, to attack “the people of Israel living in Judea.” (This is the famous occasion when, as the poet says, “The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold, and his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold.”) However, God inspires a pious Jewish widow, Judith, who beguiles Holofernes and, when he is lying drunk in his tent, cuts off his head. The enemies flee, and Judith is feted in Jerusalem as “the glory of Jerusalem, the joy of Israel,” epithets applied by the Church to our blessed Lady, who crushed the head of the devil by her humility.

Although the story is quite bloodthirsty and gory, it has always had popular appeal (perhaps for that very reason!). The name Judith simply means ‘the Jewess’, and she represents Israel itself, and therefore is a type of both Mary and the Church. She is the valiant woman, one of several in the Old Testament, who shows how God acts through those the world despises as weak and powerless. Anthony was fond of this type of image, since feminine language was applicable to the soul and the Church. He relates Judith also to the widow of Naim, whose son was raised from death by our Lord: another parallel to the Church mourning over her children dead in sin, but raised by Christ.

 

Esther

 

The Book of Esther is set during the time of the Exile, or to be more precise during the time of the Persian empire, and may have been composed to account for the Jewish feast of Purim, when it is read. It commemorates the salvation of the Jews from an attempt to exterminate them, and so has many modern resonances. In the Hebrew version, there is very little reference to God, but the Greek version contains a number of prayers which give the whole story a much more religious dimension.

King Ahasuerus (known to Greek historians as Xerxes) had dismissed his queen, Vashti, for disobedience. Instead, he took a Jewish maiden, Esther, as his queen (although she concealed her race). An enemy of the Jews, Haman, tricked the king into issuing an edict for the slaughter of the Jewish people throughout the empire, but Esther, the king’s favourite, interceded for her people and had the order revoked.

Again, this is a story Anthony uses more than once. There is a particularly good treatment of it in his sermon for the Assumption. Esther is another type of Mary, finding favour (grace) in the sight of the king, and by her prayers bringing salvation to the whole people.

 

Wider perspective

 

Once again, Anthony shows us how to use Scripture to discover and illustrate the spiritual meaning that goes beyond the literal, historical meaning. The spiritual always presupposes and builds on the literal, but is not limited to it. It is the mistake of fundamentalism narrowly to emphasise the letter at the expense of the spirit, whereas, as the Catechism clearly teaches, “In Sacred Scripture, God speaks to man in a human way. To interpret Scripture correctly, the reader must be attentive to what the human authors truly wanted to affirm, and to what God wanted to reveal to us by their words... But since Sacred Scripture is inspired, there is another and no less important principle of correct interpretation, without which Scripture would remain a dead letter. ‘Sacred Scripture must be read and interpreted in the light of the same Spirit by whom it was written.’” Saint Anthony, as always, opens up this wider perspective.