January 31: A Dream, Prayer, New Cartoon

Robert once had a dream when he was about ten years old, just after the family had returned home from Italy and he had received the Pope's blessing.  He and his father were strolling in Riverside Park, as they sometimes did in good weather, and even though there were no streams in that park, in his memory of it a stream came flowing down the hill south of Grant's Tomb.  He would remember seeing Jesus Christ standing waist high in the water, not as a grown man but as a boy of his own age.  And Jesus turned to him and beckoned, and that was the first time, he supposed, that he thought of becoming a priest.

Robert [Ives' son] struggles with his decision to enter the priesthood.  He has a girlfriend who he cares about a great deal.  He spies on a young woman from the neighborhood as she undresses in her bedroom.  On some nights, he plays in an amateur jazz band with his school friends.  He's not sure if he wants to be a priest, a husband, or a musician.  Yet, God sends him a message in a dream.  He interprets it as a call to the priesthood.  It could also be a premonition of his early death, as well.

God doesn't usually provide clear-cut answers.  We don't live in Old Testament times, when angels appeared on your doorstep and delivered personal messages from Yahweh.  No, we live in the twenty-first century.  God doesn't text or tweet or have a Facebook page.  Divine messages with clear-cut answers or instructions are a thing of the past.  Way past.

I have a friend who's struggling with a difficult question recently.  She was advised to meditate, clear her mind, and wait for some kind of answer from God.  It didn't go so well.  As a thinking, intelligent person, she couldn't stop her own thought long enough for any kind of answer from on high.  She just continued struggling.

My friend has made her decision.  I'm not sure how inspired it was, but she feels it was the correct one for her.  I just wish we lived in a world where angels still dropped by for coffee and God parted seas and turned bad guys into pillars of salt.  It would be a little easier to know right from wrong.  I'm a little tired of living in a gray world, if you get my meaning.

Maybe God's going to visit me in a dream tonight.  Maybe some seraphim is going to be waiting on my doorstep when I get home tonight.

Saint Marty should check his e-mail.  Maybe God sent him a prayer confirmation.

Confessions of Saint Marty