Pentecost, Tobit, And Tiller

Sometimes the readings from Mass just happen to line up with current events in a way that can be at times either poignant or sobering. Today’s first reading from the book of Tobit does both.

Tobit, the author of the book which bears his name, is in a state of rejoicing over the feast of Pentecost. Tobit’s celebration, as we know, predates the coming of Christ, and the subsequent descent of the Holy Spirit; but nonetheless, his heart is uplifted at the feast which commemorates the fiftieth day since Passover. I shared this sentiment as I made my way toward Church yesterday morning. However, as I sat through Mass, my thoughts were saddled with the typical onus of liturgical nitpickery, and, as is my concupiscent tendency, I found myself in the sort of spiritual state in which I knew that it would be inappropriate for me to receive the Eucharist.

On the walk home, my wife (to whom I sometimes refer as Jiminy Cricket), pointed out to me what I know intimately, but acknowledge rarely; namely that most of the time, I’m too big for my theological and liturgical britches. As with many a major feast, I had been too petty and obsessed with my own preferences (which I hereby stubbornly maintain are superior) to fully recognize the significance of what was being commemorated. Unlike Tobit, I left the feast not fed, but with a self-inflicted,
dissatisfied hunger.

We had been home for a couple of hours when the news came across the wire; George Tiller, the notorious abortionist, had been shot dead. At Church. While ushering. I immediately thought about the ushers at my geographical parish. What did I know about any of them? What did they do for a living? If someone burst into Mass one morning and gunned one of them down, would I have any idea as to why?

George Tiller. Mass murderer, if you believe what science has confirmed over and over again; that human life begins at conception. Calculated civil rights abuser, if you understand that every civil rights movement has fought for the rights and recognition of the equal dignity of each person. Cold-blooded assassin, if you recognize that vacuuming the brains out of a baby as it begins to take its first breath represents something other than a “woman’s right to her own body.” Could I still retain some mental energy for Pentecost?

And then, as in my case, Tobit’s parade was targeted by a downpour. In came the distressed Tobias, interrupting the Pentecost festivities with the announcement of a killing in the streets. “One of our people has been murdered!” Tobit’s job was now to do what nobody else would do, for fear of the state; to bury the dead, something even non-Catholics recognize as a work of mercy.

Was George Tiller one of “us?” Yes and no. Taken alone, his medical track record proves him to be a butcher of the most senseless variety, apparently without conscience or relent. If we believe man is made in the imago Dei, and that he bears that image before he escapes the birth canal, then we know that the actions of Tiller were those of a man who had either a diabolical disregard for or a pathological ignorance of what he was doing.

And yet, he was gunned down on a Sunday morning, in his house of worship. Dr. Tiller was baptized in the Trinitarian form. His soul bore the graces, however impeded, of a Sacrament recognized by Catholics and non-Catholics alike. And so the ability of us prognosticators down here to determine what happened to Tiller once he flat-lined became more difficult, as though we had any sway in the matter anyway. To our great dissatisfaction, we are unable to verify whether Tiller died in a state of unrepentance, or whether this was the one morning out of thousands upon which he awoke and prayed, “God have mercy on me, a sinner!”

It was the feast of Pentecost, and I abstained from Holy Communion. I knew that to participate in the Eucharist in my state of pride would be a damning act. And I went home, and damned George Tiller in my mind. I know that no moral equivalency can be made between being cynical about Church music and murdering defenseless people. And yet, at the same time, I mourned with Tobit. And without fear of persecution, I began to seek ways to bury the dead.