6th Week of Easter
May 22, 2020
Acts 18: 9-18Ursulines, Willow Dr., New Rochelle, N.Y.
“One nite while Paul was in Corinth,
the Lord said to him in a vision…” (Acts 18: 9).
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| Isaiah's Vision |
Visions (or dreams) play a prominent
role in the Scriptures. In the Old Testament
Joseph is famous as a dreamer an interpreter of dreams. Jacob has his famous dream of the ladder or
stairway into heaven. Isaiah, Amos,
Ezekiel, and other prophets see visions, and chunks of the book of Daniel are
constructed around dreams and visions.
In the New Testament, of course, there are the dreams of St. Joseph and
the visions of Cornelius, St. Peter, and St. Paul.
Many cultures attach great meaning to
one’s dreams, such as the Lakota for the giving of personal names and Sitting
Bull’s prophetic visions of battles with the U.S. Army.
s you know, St. John Bosco was famous
for dreams revealing his vocation, his apostolic ventures, and the future of
his boys.
Our recent rectors major—and Pope
Francis too—tell us to dream and to act on what we see. They mean Josephite or Pauline or
Bosconian-type visions, which are special gifts from God—we may call them
charisms—but they do mean something more than daydreaming.
For young persons, such dreaming means
envisioning a path for their future and their place in society and in the
Church, under the guidance of the Lord Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Obviously, you and I have to do a different
kind of dreaming. Our future is
something else entirely (doh!). What
might be the dream or vision for an Ursuline of a certain age?
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| St. Ursula, by Benozzo Gozzoli |
Dream 1: to deepen her relationship with her spouse,
our Lord Jesus, thru personal prayer, thru the celebration of the liturgy
(Mass, Reconciliation, the Hours), thru an awareness or attentiveness during
the day—the practice of the presence of God, maybe more real than when you were
a novice.
Dream 2: to continue to be an apostle of the Lord, not
a disciple gawking up to heaven like those whom the angels chided as Jesus
ascended (Acts 1:11), but an apostle carrying out the “great commission” to
make Jesus known and loved (cf. Matt 28:19).
You’re not in a classroom any longer, but you interact with people all
the time, even in this time of pandemic, sometimes face to face, otherwise by
phone, email, social media, letter-writing (do some of you still practice that
marvelous art?): with each other here,
perhaps with some house staff, with sisters in your other communities, with
your families, with your past pupils, and so on. Envision how to lead all of these to a deeper
life in Christ.
“Do not be afraid. Go on speaking, and do not be silent, for I
am with you” (Acts 18:9-10)—a vision not only for Paul, but for us too.
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