For God speaks again and again, though people do not recognize it. He speaks in dreams, in visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on people as they lie in their beds. He whispers in their ears… Job 33:14-16a
December 17th
In his homily, Father Gabriel reflects on when God spoke to Joseph in his dream and also asks us to reflect how God may speak to all of us and to invite God into our own dreams.
LISTEN to Father's Homily (coming soon)
Read the additional articles below
- The Four Dreams of St. Joseph - what can we learn from them?
- Painting - Joseph's Dream of Flight, by Daniele Crespe, c 1625
- Dreams and Visions - God Uncensored (how to invite God into our Dreams)
- Dreams from the Bible
The Four Dreams of St. Joseph - what can we learn from them?
The one thing we know about Joseph that was special was that he had four dreams in which God spoke to him.
1. When the angel came to Joseph in a dream and told him that it was OK to marry Mary –as she had not been sleeping around (Mt 1.20-21)
2. When God warned him to take Mary and the child Jesus and flee to Egypt (Mt 2:13) and
3. When an angel of the Lord came to Joseph in a dream telling him to return to Israel, following the death of Herod(Mt 2:19-20)
4. When on his way back from Egypt, Joseph was concerned about going to Israel (because Archelaus had taken over power on the death of Herod), God spoke to Joseph in a dream guiding Joseph to move with the family to Galilee. (Mt 2:22-23)
Besides Joseph and Daniel in the Old Testament, no one else has so many dreams recorded in Scripture.
So what can new deduce from the recorded life of Joseph
- God uses ordinary people like you and me. Joseph wasn’t one of the “Good and Great” of this world. He was a humble man. He was not some great intellectual thinker or theologian. Yet God decided to use this humble man to shape the life of the incarnate Son of God. What an honor and what a responsibility.
- God honors those to listen and obey. Joseph must have had a deep faith – and been a keen disciple of God. Perhaps that is why he is described as a “righteous man” one who was keen to keep God’s law. That is the reason Joseph was a man who listened and obeyed what God and the Angel told him to do. No arguing with the Angel – no discussion – he simply got on with it.
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God will guide his disciples. Joseph didn’t land up in Egypt by “chance”. He went there because of the clear leading of God. God spoke to him in a dream. He knew where he was going because he listened to what God told him to do. And it saved his, Mary and Jesus’ lives.
What can we learn from Joseph?
That true discipleship is about
1. Listening to what God has to say. That means making time to stop and listen
2. Obeying what He tells you to do – when He says it. Had Joseph hung around Bethlehem wondering if he had heard right, Herod’s men would have come and killed the whole family.
Sometime obedience to God is the difference between life and death. Why you might ask did God choose Joseph – out of all the potential fathers in Israel to mentor Jesu as he was growing up? Perhaps – because He knew Joseph to be an godly and obedient man
Painting - Joseph's Dream of Flight
Painting: Joseph’s Dream of Flight by Daniele Crespi, c. 1625
St. Joseph was by birth of the royal family of David, but was living in humble obscurity as a carpenter when God raised him to the highest sanctity, and fitted him to be the spouse of His Virgin Mother, and foster-father and guardian of the Incarnate Word. Joseph, says the Holy Scripture, was a just man; he was innocent and pure, as became the husband of Mary; he was gentle and tender, as one worthy to be named the father of Jesus; he was prudent and a lover of silence, as became the master of the holy house; above all, he was faithful and obedient to divine calls. His conversation was with angels rather than with men. When he learned that Mary bore within her womb the Lord of heaven, he feared to take her as his wife; but an angel bade him fear not, and all doubts vanished. When Herod sought the life of the divine Infant, an angel told Joseph in a dream to fly with the Child and His Mother into Egypt. Joseph at once arose and obeyed.
Dreams and Visions - God Uncensored
By: Hannah Goodwyn
A wise person once explained the importance of dreams to me in this way:
”Dreams are the perfect way to hear from God. When you are dreaming, you are quiet, so you can’t ignore Him. Plus, you are not easily distracted. You’re basically all ears for about 7 hours every night.”
Personal experience has confirmed this notion. On many occasions, the Lord has spoken powerful words of encouragement and warning while I slept. Through biblical study, I have found that God intends to speak to each of followers in this manner. In fact, the prophet Joel foretold of a time when God’s Spirit would compel us to dream (Acts 2).
I will pour out my Spirit upon all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your old men will dream dreams, and your young men will see visions. Joel 2:28
Further confirmation of God speaking through dreams to His children is found in the book of Job. In Chapter 33, Job is confronted with the reality of God’s voice in our lives – whether we hear it or not.
For God speaks again and again, though people do not recognize it. He speaks in dreams, in visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on people as they lie in their beds. He whispers in their ears… Job 33:14-16a
It’s important to understand that not all dreams are God-given. It may be that you ate something weird, or that your mind just kept going after a busy day. Dreams can also be from Satan. The enemy of our souls isn’t ignorant of the power of visions. Let I Samuel 28 be a warning. It recounts a time when King Saul seeks counsel from a medium.
How to Handle Vivid Dreams
1. Pray. Before you do anything else, pray that God exposes the source of a dream and what He wants to teach you through it.
2. Listen to God. Take a moment and sit quietly before the Lord so that you may hear His perspective. Once you feel His peace, then you can rest assured that His Spirit was the source. Hearing from the Lord can save you as it did the three wise men. They were warned in a dream to return home another way, avoiding King Herod, in turn saving the newborn Jesus (Matthew 2).
3. Write it down. Grab a notebook and write down what you remember. If after praying you feel that the dream isn’t of the Lord, then forget about it. But if you think God is in it, journal what you feel He is speaking to you.
4. Seek godly counsel. Sharing dreams is biblical. Pharaoh sought wise counsel from Joseph and a generation was saved from starvation (Genesis 41). Just be wise about with whom you share your visions. Be especially cautious of friends who consult books to interpret dreams (I John 4:1). Often, these books and philosophies leave God out of the equation altogether.
5. Let it be. The Lord will bring His dreams to your remembrance. Most of my dreams are extremely vivid; but the ones I pay closest attention to are the ones I remember years after having them. Occasionally, while sitting in God’s presence, He will recall a dream to my mind to reinforce a lesson He is teaching me. The danger comes when the dream preoccupies our thoughts instead of the One who gives us these supernatural visions.
Divine revelation through dreams occurs frequently in the Old and in the New Testament. In most of the cases recorded the dream is expressly said to come from God ; of this description are, e.g., the dreams of Abimelech ( Genesis 20:3 ); of Jacob ( Genesis 28:12 ; 31:10 ); of Solomon (IIIK.,iii,5-15); of Nabuchodonosor (Dan.,ii,19); of Daniel (Dan., vii,1); of Joseph ( Matthew 1:20 ; 3:13 ); of St. Paul ( Acts 23:11 ; 27:23 ), unless we should interpret these passages as referring to visions granted to the Apostle while awake. God is said to appear Himself only in a few instances, as to Abimelech, to Jacob, to Solomon, and to Daniel, if, as is generally admitted, the "Ancient of days", spoken of in this connection, should be understood to be God ; in other instances He is said to speak through an angel, as in dreams narrated by St. Matthew and St. Paul.
Joseph and Moses - Connecting the Old Testament with the New Testament
In Matthew, Joseph obeys the direction of an angel to marry Mary. Following the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, Joseph and family stay in Bethlehem for an unspecified period (perhaps two years) until after the visit of the Three Magi, when Joseph is told by an angel in a dream to take the family to Egypt to escape the massacre of the children of Bethlehem planned by Herod the Great, who rules Judea. Once Herod has died, an angel tells him to return, but to avoid Herod's son he takes his wife and the child to Nazareth in Galilee and settles there. Thus in Matthew, the infant Jesus, like Moses, is in peril from a cruel king, like Moses he has a (fore) father named Joseph who goes down to Egypt, like the Old Testament Joseph this Joseph has a father named Jacob, and both Josephs receive important dreams foretelling their future.
New Testament
In the New Testament there are several examples of supernatural dream-visions. An angel appears to Joseph in a dream and urges him to take Mary as his wife (Mt. 1:20); the Magi are warned in a dream not to return to Herod in Jerusalem (2:12); in a dream Joseph is warned to go to Egypt (2:13) and later to return to Israel (2:19); because of a dream he retires to Nazareth (2:22). The wife of Pilate is warned in a dream to have nothing to do with Jesus (Mt. 27:19). Supernatural dream-visions had been promised by the Prophet Joel (3:1) as gifts of the Holy Spirit in the messianic age, and Peter and his first sermon on Pentecost pointed out the fulfillment of the promise (Acts 2:16-21).
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