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  A Dream

 

It was at that age that I had a dream.1 All my life this remained deeply impressed on my mind. In this dream I seemed to be near my home in a fairly large yard. A crowd of children were playing there. Some were laughing, some were playing games, and quite a few were swearing. When I heard these evil words, I jumped immediately amongst them and tried to stop them by using my words and my fists.

  At that moment a dignified man appeared, a nobly-dressed adult. He wore a white cloak, and his face shone so that I could not look directly at him. He called me by name, told me to take charge of these children, and added these words: "You will have to win these friends of yours not by blows but by gentleness and love. Start right away to teach them the ugliness of sin and the value of virtue."

  Confused and frightened, I replied that I was a poor, ignorant child. I was unable to talk to those youngsters about religion. At that moment the kids stopped their laughing, shouting, and swearing; they gathered round the man who was speaking.

  Hardly knowing what I was saying, I asked, "Who are you, ordering me to do the impossible?"

"Precisely because it seems impossible to you, you must make it possible through obedience and the acquisition of knowledge."

  "Where, by what means, can I acquire knowledge?"

  "I will give you a teacher. Under her guidance you can become wise. Without her, all wisdom is foolishness."

  "But who are you that speak so?"

  "I am the son of the woman whom your mother has taught you to greet three times a day."2

  "My mother tells me not to mix with people I don't know unless I have her permission. So tell me your name."

  "Ask my mother what my name is."

  At that moment, I saw a lady of stately appearance standing beside him. She was wearing a mantle that spar­kled all over as though covered with bright stars. Seeing from my questions and answers that I was more confused than ever, she beckoned me to approach her. She took me kindly by the hand and said, "Look." Glancing round, I realised that the youngsters had all apparently run away. A large number of goats, dogs, cats, bears, and other animals had taken their place.

  "This is the field of your work. Make yourself humble, strong, and energetic. And what you will see happening to these animals in a moment is what you must do for my children."

  I looked round again, and where before I had seen wild animals, I now saw gentle lambs. They were all jumping and bleating as if to welcome that man and lady.

  At that point, still dreaming, I began crying. I begged the lady to speak so that I could understand her, because I did not know what all this could mean. She then placed her hand on my head and said, "In good time you will under­stand everything."

  With that, a noise woke me up and everything disap­peared. I was totally bewildered. My hands seemed to be sore from the blows I had given, and my face hurt from those I had received. The memory of the man and the lady, and the things said and heard, so occupied my mind that I could not get any more sleep that night.

  I wasted no time in telling all about my dream. I spoke first to my brothers, who laughed at the whole thing, and then to my mother and grandmother. Each one gave his own interpretation.3 My brother Joseph said, "You're going to become a keeper of goats, sheep, and other animals." My mother commented, "Who knows, but you may become a priest." Anthony merely grunted, "Perhaps you'll become a robber chief." But my grandmother, though she could not read or write, knew enough theology and made the final judgement, saying, "Pay no attention to dreams."

  I agreed with my grandmother. However, I was unable to cast that dream out of my mind. The things I shall have to say later will give some meaning to all this. I kept quiet about these things, and my relatives paid little attention to them. But when I went to Rome in 1858 to speak to the Pope about the Salesian Congregation, he asked me to tell him everything that had even the suggestion of the super­natural about it.4 It was only then, for the first time, that I said anything about this dream which I had when I was nine or ten years old. The Pope ordered me5 to write out the dream in all its detail and to leave it as an encourage­ment to the sons of that Congregation whose formation was the reason for that visit to Rome.6

   

 

Notes

1. Don Bosco is a bit vague about when this first dream oc­curred. He seems to mean that it was while he was going to school at Capriglio (see chapter i, notes 14 and 16). As we shall see, many of Don Bosco's dates in these Memoirs are problematic. In chapter 31 he refers back to this dream that he had "when I was nine years old," which would be 1824— 1825. Shortly before his death, he told his secretary Father Charles Viglietti, "I vividly revisited the scene of the dream I had when I was about ten years old, in which I dreamt of the Congregation" (MB XVIII, 340-341). He was ten in 1825-1826. At the end of this chapter, he says that he was nine or ten.

Stella (LW, p. 8) suggests that it may have been around the solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, June 29, 1825; the imagery of the dream is consonant with one of the gospels of the feast (John 21:15-19). It is also possible that the ques­tion of John's schooling was broached at this time in connec­tion with a desire that he may already have voiced, becoming a priest.

On this first dream, see Desramaut, LesMem, pp. 250-256, and Stella, LW, pp. 7-10. On Don Bosco's dreams in general, see the extended comment at the end of the notes.

2. Throughout the Catholic world, Christian practices of piety were woven into different parts of the day. The Angelus in the morning, at noon, and in the evening was one such reg­ular practice. This prayer celebrates the angel Gabriel's com­ing to the Virgin Mary and inviting her to become mother of the Messiah (Luke 1:26-38). Mary was to remain always Don Bosco's teacher and guide in his youth ministry.

3. Each member of the family showed something of his or her character in the interpretation offered. Joseph is the simple, down-to-earth farmer. Margaret speaks as a woman well versed in the ways of the Lord. Anthony's gruff dismissal of it reveals his rough character. Grandmother Bosco presents the voice of old age, no longer inclined to fantasies. In John we see the wisdom of one older than his years.

4. In asking Don Bosco about the supernatural the very first time they met, Pius IX is not specially singling him out. The Pope was peculiarly sensitive to the supernatural and looked for it whenever he suspected any hint of it (Stella, LW, p. 10, n. 15).

5. Here Don Bosco seems to combine the request of 1858 and the command of 1867. (See his preface.)

6. The purpose of Don Bosco's first visit to Rome (January 18 to April 16, 1858) was to try to secure the future of the oratories he had founded. He wanted to set a firm basis for an institution suited to the times, and for this end he carried with him a letter of recommendation from Archbishop Louis Fransoni of Turin (BM V, 561).

On this visit and the papal audiences, see Bonetti, pp. 348-358, and BM V, 523-602.

 

Comment on Don Bosco's Dreams

In I Sogni di Don Bosco (Turin: LDC, 1978), Cecilia Romero, FMA, has published a critical edition of ten of Don Bosco's dreams for which there exist manuscripts in his own hand, not including this first dream at age nine.

Giovanni Battista Lemoyne places Don Bosco's dreams in the context of his life and work (BM I, 190-191):

Don Bosco and the word dream are correlative.... It is truly astounding how this phenomenon went on in his life for sixty years. ... In both the Old and New Testaments, as well as in the lives of innumerable saints, the Lord in his fatherly love gave comfort, counsel, command, spirit of prophecy, threats and messages of hope and reward both to individuals and to entire nations through dreams. . . . Don Bosco's life was an intricate pattern of wondrous events in which one cannot but perceive direct divine assistance. Hence, we must reject the notion that he was a fool, or that he labored under illusions or that he was vain and deceitful. Those who lived at his side for thirty or forty years never once detected in him the least sign that he would betray a desire to win the esteem of his peers by pretending to be endowed with supernatural gifts.

Introducing MB XVII, Eugenio Ceria discusses at length the phenomenon of dreams in Don Bosco's life (pp. 7-13):

The largest and most characteristic kind of dreams that Don Bosco had is made up of dreams that contain revelatory elements going beyond the interpretive power of his own mind. In these dreams Don Bosco reviewed the past, viewed the present, and previewed the future. All this was generally presented to him in symbolic form. But often he was presented with realistic images.... (p. 8)

The manner in which Don Bosco narrated his dreams inclines one to accept their supernatural character. For the saint in his narration did his utmost to forestall that very interpretation. He did this by a simple and humble style of presentation and by avoiding everything that would lead others to suppose that he possessed special merits or en­joyed exceptional privileges. The Servant of God Father Rua, in the Processes [for canonization], rightly qualified the dreams as undoubted visions and expressed his conviction that Don Bosco felt duty-bound, for the good of souls, to relate the things that had been shown to him in dreams, and that this impulse was itself of supernatural origin, (pp. 10 – 11)

For a better understanding of the specific character of these dreams, we should note their logical and purposeful development. This is un­usual in dreams. Dreams are usually composed of a confused sequence of images following one another without rhyme or reason. ... In Don Bosco's dreams, on the contrary, there is always a serious and basic order to the dream sequence. And the development, whether it be simple or complicated, proceeds in an orderly fashion and without any of the wild irrationalities prevalent in common dreams. Moreover, whenever "strange" images appear, Don Bosco identifies them as such and upon inquiry receives satisfactory explanations. All this shows that the world of common dreams has been transcended, (p. 11)

In a talk with Don Bosco . . . , Father Lemoyne referred to Don Bosco's dreams as visions, and the saint said that he was correct. This led Father Lemoyne to observe in his notes: "Until about the year 1880, Don Bosco had never used this word [visions] to describe his dreams. During his last years, however, and only in confidential conversations with Father Lemoyne ... he would not object to his using the word even though Don Bosco himself did not use it first." (p. 12)

One of the most serious students of Don Bosco's life, Alberto Caviglia, evaluates his dreams thus in Don Bosco (Turin: LICE, 1934. PP- 35-36):

Dreams were a recurring experience throughout sixty of Don Bosco's seventy-three years. A good number of these dreams may be regarded simply as edifying and didactic parables; they are an attempt to express symbolically the ideas, tendencies, and hopes that were part of his spiritual and educational world. But when the future of his work is revealed in a dream with uncanny accuracy, a long time before such developments could possibly have been forecast — then we are dealing with a different phenomenon.

This phenomenon, unique in the history of saints, defies explanation. For one thing, the usual scientific theories of dreams do not explain them satisfactorily. Doctor Albertotti, who was Don Bosco's physician and also a professional psychiatrist, was unable to find a satisfactory explanation in dream theory or telepathic phenomena. The believer may interpret these dreams as visions or prophecies or revelations, etc. The Church does not forbid this interpretation. . . . We may be satis­fied with observing that these dreams happened and that their predic­tions were fulfilled.

Most recently, Morton T. Kelsey (see citation below, Brown edition) quotes from a poem of Saint Gregory Nazianzen, fourth-century father and doctor of the Church:

And God summoned me from boyhood in my nocturnal dreams, and I arrived at the very goal of wisdom.

These lines, says Kelsey, could have been written by Don Bosco (p. x). He continues:

It is quite clear that Don Bosco was a genius in opening himself to this dimension of reality. This ability was probably given to him by inher­itance and God's special grace. The important matter is that he developed this ability, used it for God and recorded his experience, (p. xvi)

  Kelsey writes that the first dream

set the course of his entire life. ... It told in symbolic form what was to be his life's mission. Even though he did not understand it, he couldn't forget it. When he was asked by Pope Pius IX to speak of the supernatural influences in his life, it was this dream that impressed the Pope so much that he ordered Don Bosco to write down his dreams for the encouragement of his Congregation and the rest of us. (p. xxxvi)

  For more about Don Bosco's dreams, see Eugenio Ceria, Don Bosco con Dio, pp. 303-326 [McGlinchey translation, pp. 121-132]; Desramaut, SpLife, pp. 34-35; Stella, ReCa, pp. 507-563.

  A handy collection of sixty-two of Don Bosco's dreams is the edition prepared by Eugene M. Brown, Dreams, Visions & Prophecies of Don Bosco (New Rochelle: Don Bosco Publications, 1986). It contains a valuable foreword by Morton T. Kelsey on dreams as a phenomenon of Christian spirituality (pp. ix-xl) and a brief introductory essay by Arthur J. Lenti, SDB, on the various types of Don Bosco's dreams and their critical evaluation (pp. xli-lii). The dreams themselves are taken from the Biographical Memoirs, with Lemoyne's, Amadei's, or Ceria's introductions to them or comments upon them.