JUST MAN DREAMING
Joseph could not ignore Mary’s pregnancy, but he had an exceptional large-heartedness, so that he preserved a future for Mary even though she had apparently wronged him.
If he had gone to sleep in a frame of mind to avenge his honour, he would not have been ready to have the deepest levels of his consciousness stirred in the way God wanted. In the deep sleep of a just and good man, Joseph was enlightened as to the divine dimension of Mary’s pregnancy. The old cycle of human history, literally generation after generation, was being broken. Something utterly new had happened.
You and I are just as likely to receive an intuition as to God’s plan for us in the depths of sleep: who we really are, who we are destined to be, where we fit in to God’s plan for transforming the whole of creation. When we get these instructive moments in our sleep, what can we do when we wake up? We can do what Joseph did: get up and do what is needed to fulfil the message.
We could pause for a moment to thank Joseph for showing what dreams can be made of. Tonight might be the night!
© Fr Michael Tate; mtate@bigpond.com, https://www.liturgyhelp.com/calendar/date/2025Dec21/0/RefMiTa