Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Fantasies and fairytales create dreams. These powerful images emotionally impact our imagination, creating visions and images, enticing our desires. Our memories solidify such imaginations urging us to recreate anew such fantasies and fairytales told down through the ages. The Lore of Yester Year influences our lives wanting the past glories and triumphs to come alive in our lives today.
The great odysseys form our thoughts, and we, like the ancients of old, want the victories, chivalry, and romances to shape our lives. We, too, want to live lives of power, majesty, bravery, gallantry, and valor. As knights shining in armor, maidens full of beauty clothed in majesty, kings and queens ruling with honesty and integrity, such dreams inspire.
Yet, the visions we have of a life filled with honor, glory, and power rarely come true because the dream world is not true. Our memories forget the folly and frustrations. Our imaginations sift out the struggles and sufferings. Our minds trick us. Yet, reality strikes.
Reality relativizes our dreams, revealing the great epics of history are filled with blood, sweat, and tears. The great heroes and heroines, decorated with wealth, power, and pleasures, are human—not gods. They struggled, cried, and battled. They fought for their lives, and because they willingly sacrificed their lives for their dreams, we remember them. They are our heroes and heroines. Inspired, artists honor them by writing plays, singing songs, painting pictures, and remembering the day of their visitation. They transcended. Magnanimous and magnificent, their valiant actions changed history. An opportunity arose and bravely they entered the fray. Willingly, they laid down their lives for their cause though fearful and frightened for they knew the cost.
Dreams are not caught. Dreams are made. Dream-makers sacrifice, discipline, and commit to make their dreams come true. They persist and persevere. Dreams are not cheap. Deeds are demanded. Deeds, not wishes and fancies, make the person become someone he thought he would never be. Instead of dream catchers, today more than ever we need dream makers. Individuals who know the value of dreams, and instead of giving up because of the cost, lay down their lives doing deeds that are needed, not always wanted.
Heroes and heroines are made. They dreamed dreams and had visions. A spirit overwhelmed them, and they acted, not counting the cost. They exhausted their resources, gave up their time, developed their talents, and used every treasure they had to build their world. For some this meant wealth, honor, riches, and glory. For others this meant suffering, death, and martyrdom.
Today, riches and treasures inspire. Comfort and good cheer hold us. Softness and security surround us. Yet never was a hero made living softly and tenderly. Battles make heroes and heroines. Heroic virtue: exhausting one’s strength, being completely used up, changes dream catchers into dream makers. Living the life of the dream pours out the spirit within knowing that within the heart, the dream will never die. It comes not from self, but true dreams come from God. He is the dream maker. We are his dream catchers. He inspires, giving us his Spirit to become his heroes and heroines, the saints of the Most High.
Joel, the prophet of doom, proclaims the message that St. Peter quotes at Pentecost revealing the dreams of the Israelites have come to past. The pending doom portrayed by the infestation of the locusts, plaguing the people with famine, drought, and disease; yet he speaks of hope. “All who call upon the name of the LORD shall be delivered” (Joe 2:32). His prophecy reveals the great dream as the people suffer the natural calamities foreshadowing the supernatural calamity that comes from sin: rebellion against God. Through suffering, our hearts are purified. Through difficulties, our dreams are shattered, but made new. God’s Spirit will come making our dreams come true.
Divine dreams are different. They seek not the wealth and riches of earthly treasures, but the glory and majesty of the Heavenly Kingdom. God’s Spirit inspires these dreams. Not the dreams of Cinderella’s and wicked witches, but the dream of New Creation, a New Jerusalem.
I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband (Rev 21:2).
Here the Bridegroom, Jesus, dwells with his Bride, the Church. Here, Jesus wipes away the tears of suffering. Here “Death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away” (Rev 21:4). Here the promise of a new Kingdom, celebrated by a new banquet where God “will make for all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of choice wines—of fat things full of marrow, of choice wines well refined” (Is 25:6). The veil will be torn open. The tears will be wiped away. God will take away the sins of the people. He will make all things new (Rev 21:5).
God makes this dream come true. It is not a dream of worldly delights and fanciful feasts, but a dream that heals the wounds that plague our hearts. A dream that refreshes the stricken hearts shattered by sin. Here the Divine Dream Maker changes sadness into joy, sickness into health, war into peace, and death into life.
St. Peter who witnessed the loss of the Savior, Jesus upon the cross, received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. In this Spirit, Peter preaches the New Pentecost, the fulfillment of all our dreams.
It shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even upon the menservants and maidservants in those days, I will pour out my spirit (Joe 2:28–29).
Dreams of this magnitude cannot come from humanity. They come from Divinity. God’s Spirit clothes us with grace, filling us with life, making all things new in Christ. Yet, this newness comes at a cost. The garment of salvation is not cheap. It has its price. Lamentations tells us to be weary of false dreams misleading. Rather, the Holy Spirit expose our iniquities.
Your prophets have seen for you false and deceptive visions; they have not exposed your iniquity to restore your fortunes, but have seen for you oracles false and misleading (La 2:14).
As the listeners heard the preaching of Peter, they cried out, “What shall we do?” (Act 2:37) Knowing this message was new, different, transcendent, Peter proclaims,
Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38).
Repentance makes our dreams come true. As Jesus preached; “Repent the Kingdom of Heaven is at Hand” (Matt 4:17) so does Peter, but do we repent? Do we clothe ourselves with that white wedding garment that makes us new?
In the Parable of the Marriage Feast, Jesus invites everyone. The doors of salvation are thrown open wide welcoming everyone in. Yet, as servants are sent to gather the guests, one man enters. He is not properly clothed. Asked, “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?” (Matt 22: 12) He is mute.
The toil and labor spent by so many seeking to fulfill their dreams only empties them. They live a life filled with fantasies and false dreams. They hoped for an earthly life, filled with excitement and exercise. They sought fanciful styles and foolish follies. Yet, at the end of their lives, they are burnt out. They became smoldering wicks and broken reeds. They became deaf and dumb, dull to the movements of the Spirit. They could not repent nor be refreshed. Yet, when we admit exhaustion and turn to the Lord, repenting, He fills us with his Spirit. In his Spirit, we find strength. This strength, a supernatural power, empowers us to advance against the foe.
Centuries ago, St. Gregory the Great, correcting his priests preached to them bold resistance against the foe, irrepentance. Repentance, he states,
Involves a bold resistance to the powers of this world in defense of the flock. To stand fast in battle on the day of the Lord means to oppose the wicked enemy out of love for what is right (St. Gregory the Great, Pastoral Guide, Lib. 2, 4; PL 77,30-31, taken from Office of Readings, 27th Sunday Ordinary Time).
Repentance is not easy. It admits mistakes. It embraces our failures. It creates guilt and sadly shame. But our emotions do not define us. They are not our character. They are signs often warning us. The life you are leading is not the way of the Lord. It is a false fantasy that ends in remorse, regret, and regrettably death. But if interpreted properly, our emotions, especially those powerful ones that reproach us, are the steppingstones to repentance. They are the dream makers that change the direction of our lives. No longer do we live in a fantasy world, but we live in the Kingdom of Heaven where all our dreams come true.