Let’s be close to Mary and Joseph

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

THE feast of the Nativity of Our Lady (September 8) reminds us that we should be close to both Mary and Joseph since they can serve as the surest guide for us to be with Christ. And to be with Christ is, in the end, what is most important in our life.

In the gospel of that feast (cfr. Mt 1,18-23), we are reminded of how both Mary and Joseph handled their divine vocation, something that if looked upon only with human eyes, can never be understood. Both show us how to correspond to the supernatural interventions that God continues to make on us, making use even of dreams to relay his messages to us.

We have to find a way to be intimately close to Our Lady, our Mother. We need to learn how to read her mind and catch the slightest insinuations she makes, because all these are a tremendous help in our spiritual life.

That’s precisely because with all the bombardment of things we are subjected to these days, Mary, the Mother of Christ who gave her to us to be our mother too, shows us how to be spiritual and supernatural in the midst of our glutting human affairs.

Let’s remember that the present mad race to technological progress can stimulate us wrongly, pressuring us to succumb to mindless activism and to drift to uncharted territory guided only by ignorance, confusion if not outright error.

In this way, she shows us how to live our life to the full, not reduced to the purely earthly and material levels. She shows us how to fall in love properly, since love is why we have been created, the principle that gives meaning and direction to our life. And to think that there are endless bogus versions of love!

Let’s also be close to Joseph who knew how to give priority to the supernatural interventions in his life over his natural and human understanding of things. Even if those divine interventions were communicated to him in dreams, he knew how to correspond to them properly, that is, with deep faith in God that enabled him to correspond with dispatch and wisdom.

If we are truly close to God, dreams can be an effective vehicle to know God’s will and ways. Yes, it is possible that God, angels and saints can enter into our dreams. We can be divinely inspired. Everything is possible with God.

But let’s remember that what we usually dream about are what we have in our mind and heart, in our spiritual life, whether there is faith or unbelief, whether we tend more to our rationality or to our animality, whether we are more open to the supernatural or to the infranatural. In short, our dreams reflect the kind of life we have, the kind of person we are.

The dreams these trying times of the Covid pandemic are occasioning, can serve as some kind of catalyst to show the kind of life we have and the kind of person we are.

And mind you, it is not only the state of mental health or psychological condition that is reflected in these dreams. It is also the kind of spiritual and supernatural life one is having. Thus, our dreams can show whether we are dominated more by fear or by hope.

Let’s be close to Mary and Joseph to know how to deal with God’s interventions in our life.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com