IN PURSUIT OF GOD'S DREAM

When I contemplate the season of Advent, many things come to mind about preparing the way for the Lord, especially within my daily life. I find myself reflecting on how am I becoming and making Christ more visible through my presence, actions and words. I find myself pondering the awesome humility of God to become one like us so that we would have a direct and tangible experience of the unconditional love, mercy, compassion of our Triune God. Advent also challenges me to enter the desert to take an honest look at myself, as a friar committed to walking in the footprints of the poor, humble and crucified Christ. It is the season of Advent that offers me an opportunity to assess my level of commitment to bring about a new heaven and new earth of peace, justice and integrity of creation.

I also believe that Advent awakens one to the significance and power of dreams in the formation and direction of one’s life. Mary and Joseph shared a common dream to be husband and wife and to create a family together. God altered their dream by calling Mary to be the mother of the Messiah through the power of the Holy Spirit. Joseph’s dream to take Mary as his wife is shattered by her pregnancy. Yet God remakes Mary’s and Joseph’s broken dream.

Elizabeth and Zechariah gave up on their dream to conceive a child due to their old age. Yet God remakes their shattered dream with the conception and birth of John, “for nothing is impossible with God.”

Advent reveals how God can take ordinary dreams and make them extraordinary by reshaping and remaking our broken dreams into a new dream. For example, St. Francis experienced this when his dream to be a great knight was shattered and God reshaped his dream of knighthood into being a knight for Christ in the rebuilding of the Church.

The season of Advent inspires us to reflect on God’s specific dream for each one of us as a particular reflection of his goodness and beauty in the world. Carve out some time to ponder how God, our Dream Maker, has taken your shattered dreams and reshaped them into extraordinary dreams that are in tune with the specific dream God has for you.

It is in the pursuit and reshaping of our dreams that we gradually discern the dream God has for each of us, as a distinct incarnational event.

John Doctor, OFM
Vice President for Mission and Ministry
Quincy University