Angelic Dream

Friday, Dec. 16, 2016

I met my guardian angel in a dream the other night. Archie didn’t look anything like any angel I ever heard of. He wasn’t dressed in white like the angels Mary Magdalene saw at the tomb, he didn’t have six wings like seraphim, his body wasn’t like topaz and his face like lightening, in keeping with the one who spoke to Daniel. 

Also unlike the angels in the Bible, he didn’t say, “Do not be afraid,” probably because nothing about him inspired fear. To my eye, he appeared to be nothing more than a young man in his 20s who would blend into any crowd. In fact,  I wouldn’t have believed he was an angel except for the dream-induced certainty that is what he was. 

I refrained from commenting on his appearance, but he still knew my thoughts, and he said, “This is how you perceive me.”

Maybe he didn’t look like an angel, but he sure sounded like one. For a guardian angel, I want a granite-hewn being with a flaming sword, not a callow youth with an unprepossessing manner and name to match, but this heavenly being implied that I lack the ability to discern his true appearance.

As far as I can discern, Archie’s message that I don’t see things as they truly are was the sole reason for the dream, and that message was reinforced by one of my daily reflections this week:  

“Those who have abandoned themselves to God always lead mysterious lives and receive from him exceptional and miraculous gifts by means of the most ordinary, natural and chance experiences in which there appears to be nothing unusual. The simplest sermon, the most banal conversations, the least erudite books become a source of knowledge and wisdom to these souls by virtue of God’s purpose. This is why they carefully pick up the crumbs which clever minds tread under foot, for to them everything is precious and a source of enrichment.” – Jean-Pierre de Caussade, SJ

As if to make sure I got the message, on Friday morning, Father Martin Diaz pointed out that, like those of whom Jesus spoke about in the Gospel who saw John the Baptist as possessed by a demon and the Son of Man as a glutton and a drunkard, the Spanish bishop of Mexico didn’t believe Saint Juan Diego when he reported having seen the Virgin of Guadalupe on the hill of Tepeyac. We are like the bishop, Fr. Martin said, in that we have our preconceptions of the type of person who should witness a miracle – and most of us wouldn’t think it would be a poor, indigenous peasant when a well-off, well-educated priest was not too far in the distance! 

Fr. Martin’s homily, the reflection by Fr. Caussade and Archie’s statement all remind me that I have yet to take the Gospel advice to remove the wooden beam in my own eye. If my ears had been open to wisdom during Father Martin’s preaching today, what would I have heard? If I could see people around me as God does rather than through my own prejudices, what would I learn from them? If I could see Archie as he truly is, how would he appear?

For the past two years I’ve been trying to find ways to abandon myself to God so that I can receive from him the exceptional gifts of which Fr. Caussade speaks. Most of the time I feel as though I’m blindly groping along a dark path, but occasionally I am given moments such as the dream that are enough to keep me praying, reflecting and learning from others as I seek Wisdom, so that her works may be vindicated in me.