Mom's dream

When I visited Mom today after working at the 1st Annual “Ministry Fair” at Saint Anne’s, she was excited to share with me a dream she had last night. I won’t “steal her thunder” and recount the dream here, because she wants to share it with a couple of other people first—and it is, after all, her dream. I could not do it justice. She said she thought it was kind of a weird dream, but it seemed to make sense to her.

She asked me what I thought about her dream. I told her I thought it was the Holy Spirit speaking to her much in the same way He “spoke” to the Apostles on that first Pentecost. The biggest reason I feel this way is because of the excitement that was in her voice as she retold the dream. The other reasons I truly believe it was the Holy Spirit speaking to her are two-fold—first, it is a very positive message that she got from the dream. Secondly, the dream put the Holy Trinity in perfect “sync” with one another to reinforce her own interpretation.

It’s taken me most of the afternoon and evening (it’s now 10:45 in the evening) to put words to what I think of your dream, Mom. But I think the message is clear and the same conclusion you came to on your own:

Jesus conquered the world through love. Pure and simple. He conquered the world in the sacrifice that the world regarded as uttermost folly.

And through Jesus, we have conquered the world. We are human, we fail, we fear, we do not do as we should. But even in our fallibility, we have the great Conqueror at our head, showing us how to love and as a result, ultimately, how to triumph.

In Jesus, we have conquered the world. But we must understand what that means. If we understand Jesus properly, we conquer most completely when we serve most devotedly. Indeed, we have conquered the world; however, our responsibilities to the whole people of God have only increased. We must share love, teach love, and be love to the world. We must serve those around us and we must show ourselves in the light of the Conqueror of all -- Jesus Christ.

God is love and we are the Body of Christ. Both are states of being. God does not love, God is Love. Jesus does not love, Jesus is Love. We are the true Body of Christ only when we are living the Body of Christ. Body of Christ is meant to be a verb, not a noun. The Body of Christ is love, is compassion, is friendship, is laughter, is hard work, is giggling, is solidarity and freely living.

I give glory to the Father when I am his “work”. When I live out my personal vocation within the being of the Body of Christ, I am the Father’s “work”. My being glorifies the Lord.

We might think that we are alone out there in a world that does not always represent our values. Christ anticipates that we will have troubles, but reminds us that He has conquered the world. He assures us that He is not alone, in case we are worrying about that, in that He is always with our Father.

And finally, He says His purpose in saying all of this is that we might have PEACE!