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St. John Bosco
Feastday January 31
1815-1888
What do dreams have to with prayer?
Aren't they just random images of our mind? In 1867 Pope Pius IX was
upset with John Bosco because he wouldn't take his dreams seriously
enough. Nine years earlier when Pope Pius IX met with the future saint
who worked with neglected boys, he learned of the dreams that John had
been having since the age of nine, dreams that had revealed God's will
for John's life. So Pius IX had made a request, "Write down these
dreams and everything else you have told me, minutely and in their
natural sense." Pius IX saw John's dreams as a legacy for those
John worked with and as an inspiration for those he ministered to.
Despite
Scripture evidence and Church tradition respecting dreams, John had
encountered skepticism when he had his first dream at the age of nine.
The young Bosco dreamed that he was in a field with a crowd of children.
The children started cursing and misbehaving. John jumped into the crowd
to try to stop them -- by fighting and shouting. Suddenly a man with a
face filled with light appeared dressed in a white flowing mantle. The
man called John over and made him leader of the boys. John was stunned
at being put in charge of these unruly gang. The man said, "You
will have to win these friends of yours not with blows but with
gentleness and kindness."
As
adults, most of us would be reluctant to take on such a mission -- and
nine year old John was even less pleased. "I'm just a boy," he
argued, "how can you order me to do something that looks
impossible." The man answered, "What seems so impossible you
must achieve by being obedient and acquiring knowledge." Then the
boys turned into the wild animals they had been acting like. The man
told John that this is the field of John's life work. Once John changed
and grew in humility, faithfulness, and strength, he would see a change
in the children -- a change that the man now demonstrated. The wild
animals suddenly turned into gentle lambs.
When
John told his family about his dream, his brothers just laughed at him.
Everyone had a different interpretation of what it meant: he would
become a shepherd, a priest, a gang leader. His own grandmother echoed
the sage advice we have heard through the years, "You mustn't pay
any attention to dreams." John said, "I felt the same way
about it, yet I could never get that dream out of my head."
Eventually
that first dream led him to minister to poor and neglected boys, to use
the love and guidance that seemed so impossible at age nine to lead them
to faithful and fulfilled lives. He started out by learning how to
juggle and do tricks to catch the attention of the children. Once he had
their attention he would teach them and take them to Mass. It wasn't
always easy -- few people wanted a crowd of loud, bedraggled boys
hanging around. And he had so little money and help that people thought
he was crazy. Priests who promised to help would get frustrated and
leave. Two "friends" even tried to commit him to an
institution for the mentally ill. They brought a carriage and were
planning to trick him into coming with him. But instead of getting in,
John said, "After you" and politely let them go ahead. When
his friends were in the carriage he slammed the door and told the drive
to take off as fast as he could go!
Through
it all he found encouragement and support through his dreams. In one
dream, Mary led him into a beautiful garden. There were roses
everywhere, crowding the ground with their blooms and the air with their
scent. He was told to take off his shoes and walk along a path through a
rose arbor. Before he had walked more than a few steps, his naked feet
were cut and bleeding from the thorns. When he said he would have to
wear shoes or turn back, Mary told him to put on sturdy shoes. As he
stepped forward a second time, he was followed by helpers. But the walls
of the arbor closed on him, the roof sank lower and the roses crept onto
the path. Thorns caught at him from all around. When he pushed them
aside he only got more cuts, until he was tangled in thorns. Yet those
who watched said, "How lucky Don John is! His path is forever
strewn with roses! He hasn't a worry in the world. No troubles at
all!" Many of the helpers, who had been expecting an easy journey,
turned back, but some stayed with him. Finally he climbed through the
roses and thorns to find another incredible garden. A cool breeze
soothed his torn skin and healed his wounds.
In
his interpretation, the path was his mission, the roses were his charity
to the boys, and the thorns were the distractions, the obstacles, and
frustrations that would stand in his way. The message of the dream was
clear to John: he must keep going, not lose faith in God or his mission,
and he would come through to the place he belonged. Often John acted on
his dreams simply by sharing them, sometimes repeating them to several
different individuals or groups he thought would be affected by the
dream. "Let me tell you about a dream that has absorbed my
mind," he would say.
The
groups he most often shared with were the boys he helped -- because so
many of the dreams involved them. For example, he used several dreams to
remind the boys to keep to a good and moral life. In one dream he saw
the boys eating bread of four kinds -- tasty rolls, ordinary bread,
coarse bread, and moldy bread, which represented the state of the boys'
souls. He said he would be glad to talk to any boys who wanted to know
which bread they were eating and then proceeded to use the occasion to
give them moral guidance. He died in 1888, at the age of seventy-two.
His work lives on in the Salesian order he founded.
(Source:
Catholic Online)
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St. Michael the Archangel
St.
Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle; be our safeguard against the
wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray.
And do you, O prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, cast
into Hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world
seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.
Copyright ©
2002 Saint Michael Center for the Blessed Virgin Mary
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