In the Bible, dreams often play an important role. Especially famous in the book of Genesis are the dreams of Joseph of Egypt, the son of Jacob, the Jewish Patriarch. In At. Matthew’s Gospel in the New Testament, we see the importance of the dreams of Joseph, the foster father of Jesus. Both of these Josephs accomplished their missions through the dreams that God used to guide their lives.

In the lives of the saints of the New Covenant, there is at least one who stands out for the role that dreams had in his life; it is St. John Bosco. His whole vocation was revealed to him in a dream that became reality. Even after he had become the head of the Salesian order, he still continued to receive inspirations and prophetic insights through dreams which he shared with his community.

The year of the Eucharist, inaugurated by Pope John Paul II and beginning in October 2004, brought to mind a famous dream that St. John Bosco had in 1862. St. John Bosco was in the habit of narrating such dreams to his community. Sometimes he explained them, and sometimes he asked others what their own comments were. On May 30, l862, he told the members of the society the following dream.

He sees a great naval battle on a vast sea with many ships. The sailing ships are armed in the way that was used in those days. They have cannons, etc. But what is unusual is that they even are armed with books! There is one particularly large ship which stands out from the rest, and many other ships seem intent on destroying it. On the other hand, the great ship is escorted by a number of smaller ships which receive their instructions from signals that are given to them by the great ship.

In the great ship as supreme commander, there stands the Pope. Seeing the ship oppressed by so many enemies, he signals to the captains of the smaller ships to join him for a meeting to establish a plan of action. However, a storm begins to rise on the sea, and after a short while, it becomes necessary for the captains to return to their own vessels. After a while, the weather improves, and once again they meet together. However, after this meeting ends, yet another and more dangerous storm arises.

In the sea, there are two gigantic columns. On the top of one of the columns, there is a large statue of the Virgin Mary. There is also an inscription which reads "Help of Christians." On the top of the other pillar, which is much larger, is an enormous Eucharistic Host. The inscription there reads "Salvation of Believers."

The Holy Father directs his sailors to steer the ship between these two pillars so that they can fasten themselves to the many chains that hang down from them to be saved from the terrible storm. Meanwhile, throughout all this time, the other ships are fighting as hard as they can to sink the Pope’s ship and stop its progress, but they fail totally. Whatever damage they are able to do to the hull of the pope’s ship is immediately healed by a gentle breeze that flows out from the two columns. On the other hand, the other ships, which persist in attacking the Pope’s ship, are themselves so badly damaged in the battle that they either sink or remain helpless.

Suddenly, the Pope himself is injured, and although he tries to rise up again, he is struck again and dies. The captains of the other ships then gather and elect a new Pope, to the dismay of the enemies, and the new Pope succeeds in guiding the ship to the two columns in the sea.

It is then that the enemy ships finally are dispersed or sunk. Meanwhile, the ships that were loyal to the Pope gather around the pillars to link themselves to the columns as well. Some ships, that had remained somewhat far away due to their fear of the battle, now sail past the wrecks of the enemies to also link themselves to the two columns. All this is followed by a great calm on the sea.

St. John Bosco then asked his confrere don Rua what he thought of the dream, and don Rua remarked that the great ship was the Church, assisted by her loyal friends. The two columns stand for the Blessed Virgin and the Blessed Sacrament. John Bosco agreed with him and added that the enemy ships are the persecutions that the Church must face, and that serious trials were going to come upon the Church. He also insisted that the salvation of the Church rests on the practice of frequent Communion and devotion to the Blessed Virgin. As for the death of the Pope, he made no comments.

Dreams in the Bible are often symbolic, as were the dreams of Joseph of Egypt, the son of Jacob, and thus dreams can be difficult to interpret. Nevertheless, it seems striking that in these times of trouble, we find the present Holy Father is making every effort to accomplish precisely what was done symbolically in the dream of St. John Bosco. Here I am referring precisely to the year of the Rosary that ended in October of 2003 and the year of the Eucharist which began in October of 2004. It is as if the Pope symbolically is trying to "tie" the Church between these two devotions just as the Pope of the dream tied them between the two pillars.

Of course, the interpretation of the dream in general is clearer than the details. Is the death of the Pope in the dream, something that is literal or something that is symbolic? If it is symbolic, what does it mean? St. John Bosco himself remained silent on this point. In any event, the dream is thought-provoking and a hopeful comment on the times in which we are living. In the dream, the election of the new Pope is quite sudden – he is elected before the news of the first Pope’s death arrives. Since this would seem to be impossible, the dream (with the benefit of hindsight) seems to predict the miraculous salvation of the Pope, who thus becomes in a manner of speaking a "new" Pope.

There is one other intriguing detail that I mention here. Don Bosco had another dream of two archangels holding banners. Michael had one "Lepanto, 1571." Gabriel had another which seemed to indicate a similar future victory. Shortly after this, Don Bosco constructed a large church in Turin dedicated to the Virgin Mary as Help of Christians, the same title she has in the famous dream of the battle. On top of the matching bell towers, he put the two angels. In the Angel dream, the Archangel Michael’s banner, Lepanto, calls to mind a famous battle in which the navy of the Ottoman empire launched an attack that had the aim of subjugating all of Europe to Turkish rule. At that time, the Holy Father organised a great rosary campaign and the Turkish fleet was vanquished, also by the providential help of a sudden change of wind during the battle at sea. Today we continue to celebrate it every October 7, on the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. As in the dream, our present Holy Father was once almost murdered, but he himself was convinced that he was saved by a miracle, which he attributed to the Virgin Mary under the title of Our Lady of Fatima. Could it be that in this detail of his death, at least, reality has a happier ending than the dream itself? Could it be that the Pope’s survival, which he himself saw as a miracle, replaced that tragic death of the dream as we have already suggested? As with all prophetic utterances, we will only really know how to interpret it when all has been accomplished. However, there are some other Fatima details that are relevant here.

The fact that Pope John Paul II saw his escape from death as connected with Fatima has a very understandable basis: the assassination attempt actually occurred on May 13, the anniversary of the first apparition of Our Lady of Fatima. It is interesting that she herself in her last apparition on October 13, 1917, also indicated a connection with victory of Lepanto by declaring that she was "The Lady of the Rosary." The feast of Our Lady of the Rosary falls on October 7, and the whole month is dedicated to the rosary. It was the final month of the Fatima apparitions.

One year after his miraculous escape from death, the Pope arranged for the statue of Our Lady of Fatima to be brought to Rome so that he could read out a solemn consecration before the statue in St. Peter’s square. This stressed his conviction that his life was saved through her active intervention. In the light of these events, it is not amazing that in the year of the Millennium, 2000, the Pope again stressed the importance of Fatima by televising with enormous publicity the last part of the message of Fatima that had been kept secret for more than 80 years. Could it be that Fatima’s promise of a triumph of Mary’s Immaculate Heart and a future "period of peace" is connected with the future victory in the dream of St. Bosco about the two angels?

The connection between the Virgin Mary and the area of Fatima is deep and goes back in history to the time of the reconquest of Portugal after three centuries of occupation by the Moors. The first king of the newly liberated Portugal was King Alfonso Henriques, who placed the whole kingdom under the patronage of the Virgin Mary in a signed document on April 28, 1142.

The fact that the name of Fatima coincides with the most famous Muslim woman of all time is not really a coincidence. In fact, a traditional Portuguese ballad tells about the daughter, Fatima, of a famous Muslim prince, Alcacer do Sol; she was captured and then married to a Christian knight, Gonçalo Hermingues. Afterwards, her Christian name was Oureana, which is why the town near Fatima is named Ourem. Fatima itself takes its name from the place of her burial.

The connection, then, between the present Pope and the Pope of St. John Bosco’s dream, is striking when we look back over what we have just explained. However, not many know that there is also a Eucharistic aspect of the apparitions of Fatima which is also striking when taken in the context of St. John Bosco’s dream.

Although many are familiar with the general outlines of the Virgin Mary’s apparitions at Fatima, not too many are aware that there were the apparitions of three angels in succession that prepared for the famous apparitions of Mary. The first angel was the angel of Peace; the second angel was the guardian angel of Portugal, but it is the third angel who is most relevant to the dream of St. John Bosco, for he was the angel of the Eucharist.

The first angel, the angel of peace, is relevant to the dream, because he indicates the end of the dream – peace. The second angel indicates the particular role which Fatima (Portugal) would have in bringing about this peace. The third angel brings out the Eucharistic aspect of the dream.

The Eucharistic angel appeared towards the end of September or in the beginning of October. Since she was a child at the time, Sr. Lucia could not give the exact date in her testimony. Before the angel appeared, the children were repeating over and over again the prayer that the first angel had taught them: "My God, I believe, I adore, I hope and I love you. I ask pardon of You for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not hope, and do not love You!" It was then that Eucharistic angel appeared.

Sr. Lucia describes the angel and the scene in this way:

"He was holding a chalice in his left hand, with the Host suspended above it, from which some drops of blood fell into the chalice. Leaving the chalice suspended in the air, the Angel knelt down beside us and made us repeat three times: ‘Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I offer you the most precious Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the sacrileges, outrages and indifference by which He Himself is offended. And through the infinite merits of His most Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg of you the conversion of poor sinners.’"

He gave the host to Lucia and he gave Jacinta and Francisco the chalice to drink from. He said to those two: "Take and drink, the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, horribly outraged by ungrateful men. Make reparation for their crimes and console your God."

In retrospect, we can see then that the message of Fatima, which spoke of a great crisis for the Church and suffering for the Pope, put into words much of what St. John Bosco dreamed. Likewise, the very "defences" which St. John Bosco saw in the dream are the same ones proposed in the message of Fatima – the Eucharist and the rosary. The proclamation of a year of the rosary, ending in October 2003 and the proclamation of a year of the Eucharist, beginning in October 2004 would seem to be the symbolic chains by which Pope John Paul hopes to anchor the Church in the storm of crisis which besets our time.

As the ancient Christians used to say "Maranatha": Come, Lord Jesus. Every Eucharistic gathering is a renewal of the saving presence of Jesus in our midst. It is this same Lord and Saviour whom we come to know and love by praying and contemplating through the eyes and heart of the Virgin Mary in the recitation of the holy rosary. May the dream of St. John Bosco find its fulfilment in our troubled times.

Bibliography:

BOSCO, JOHN: Don Bosco’s Dreams, Salesiana Publishers, New Rochelle.

FRERE MICHEL DE LA SAINT TRINITE: The Whole Truth About Fatima, vol. I, Immaculate Heart Publications, Buffalo, 1983.