“Stop that day-dreaming!”
I suspect that each of us heard those words at least once in our childhood. Often it would be followed up with. “There’s work to do!”
Today, I ask myself “Am I a dreamer?” “What do I dream about?”
- cessation of the horrors in Ukraine
- an end to covid
- personal healing
- … fill in your own dreams
Let me ask the other question. How do I work to fulfill that dream? But first…
Have you ever thought of God as a dreamer?
I did not until recent times. Then I read that Pope Francis describes God as a dreamer.
Think about it! … Isn’t God’s dream another name for God’s plan for us and all creation?
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”Jeremiah 29:11
““No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no heart has imagined, what God has prepared for those who love Him.” 1 Cor 2:9
Once again, we are about to celebrate the feast of another dreamer… Joseph.
St. Joseph was a dreamer
Pope Francis reminds us that Joseph was a dreamer. In fact, four of his dreams are recorded in scripture. God speaks to Joseph in a particular way when he is the most silent … when he sleeps.
(Keep in mind that we may not have dreamt the way Joseph did. But… do we have moments when we have stilled our hearts enough that we hear God speaking?)
In dreams, God tells Joseph
- not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife (Matthew 1:20–21)
- it is safe to leave Bethlehem and Egypt. (Matthew 2:13)
- it is safe to go back to Israel. (Matthew 2:19–20)
- to depart for the region of Galilee instead of going to Judea. (Matthew 2:22)
After each of his dreams, he acted. Joseph did what God asked of him in his dreams.
Joseph as protector and guardian of God’s dream
In doing what God asked of him in a dream, Joseph acted and worked as the initial protector of God’s dream… a dream soon to be manifested in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.
What would have happened if Joseph had not accepted his role as protector of Mary and Jesus in the perilous early years of Jesus’ life?
Remember… neither Joseph nor Mary knew the details of the role they were playing in God’s dream of bringing us the ultimate good news. They both said yes in spite of not knowing the details of the script.
Pope Francis prays for dreamers
Pope Francis ended his homily by praying especially for young people. he asks “give young people the ability to dream, to take risks and to take on the difficult tasks seen in their dreams”.
Pope Francis also prays that each of us be faithful dreamers like Joseph… “Grant all of us the ability to dream because when we dream great things, good things, we draw near to God’s dream, what God dreams about us”.
These prayers should have special relevance for all of us who wish to follow Vincent and Louise as bearers of the Good News of God’s dream. The marginalized so often have had their dreams snuffed out.
Questions for each of us today
- Have I ever gotten beyond my own dreams to think of God’s Dream?
- Do I recognize I work as an agent of God’s dream?
- Can I accept my responsibility in God’s dream of a kingdom where we one another’s feet and lay down our lives for one another?
Click below for an early version of this Vincentin Mindwalk
Dreaming, Daydreaming
I had a friend years ago who deliberately used his dreams to figure out things that puzzled him. He was a plumber by trade but had found a second career installing water softener systems. Often, those and other plumbing systems needed a complex grid for their proper implementation. If he stumbled upon a customer who had a scenario he hadn’t seen before, he committed it to his “dream assignment” for that night. Invariably, when he would awaken the next morning, the grid would be laid out before him in his mind and was easy to convert into reality. He became legendary because of his “dream assignments.”
When Confirmation time came many years ago, I grappled between Joseph and John for a Confirmation name. Since John has been a long-standing traditional name in my family, it had a good lineage. My Dad’s brother’s name was Joe and he was a family favorite. I’m sure that had some influence on my choosing that name instead. In hindsight, the choice was provident since I have developed such a bond with Joseph and what his life must have been like. While Joseph’s use of dreams might not be as self-directed as my friend’s dreams, he clearly relied on that form of outside guidance for help with life decisions.
I find myself daydreaming a lot at Mass. In many ways, I’m transported to other times and places and what might have been, or still could be. Often, the catalyst is a word or phrase in the Scriptures or even the way the reader emphasized one word over another. I used to feel guilty about those mind meanderings, but I have come to appreciate how they bring the Scriptures alive for me and help build that grid my friend sees, what you call “God’s dream,” that helps my life to make sense.
Thanks for helping to put all that together today.
“Have I ever gotten beyond my own dreams to think of God’s Dream?”
I must confess that in my life there were moments when I asked God why God allowed me to follow Him in a modern movement of the Church with final vows of chastity, poverty and obedience ready to give all my life to bring Jesus’ message to the whole world only to realize that such movement was more interested in growing in popularity and fame than in living Jesus’ Gospel so much so that little by little I saw my faith in God almost completely erased.
What had happened?
My dream of being Jesus’ disciple, after 23 years of living as a consecrated woman in a lay state, had disappeared and, with it, almost my faith in God.
I remember that I put my previous marriage to God in that movement back on the altar, figuratively speaking, and it took me another 20 years “to hear” the answer to my question:
your dream, now, is helping the Church, helping Pope Francis and all the Bishops and Cardinals to see a bit more clearly what is happening IN REALITY in this young movement as well as “to sound the alarm” about certain “faith erasing” attitudes in this group and in other similar movements.
“Do I recognize I work as an agent of God’s dream?”
I will only recognize it, I guess, when I am in my next life. I can only say that things are changing with regard to certain groups/movements in the Church. Pope Francis is talking about many of the problems I saw and he is taking many steps to assure that the movements do not live as parallel churches with their own “gospels”.
“Can I accept my responsibility in God’s dream of a kingdom where we wash one another’s feet and lay down our lives for one another?”
Yes, I can, with the grace of God.
“Think and grow rich,” says Napoleon Hill in a book by that title. How many of us wish that the children of light are wiser than the children of this world (see Lk 16, 8).