Most of us have woken with a dream still sitting in the room. The modern world offers two cheap answers. One treats every dream as a message. The other treats every dream as rubbish. The Church has never been that simple.
Scripture is not embarrassed by sleep. Jacob woke at Bethel and poured oil on a stone. Pharaoh’s cows sent Egypt to the granaries. St Joseph, a carpenter in Matthew’s Gospel, was told four times in the night what to do with Mary and the Child — and each morning he got up and did it. The same Bible also closes a door. Sirach says that dreams have deceived many. The first commandment forbids treating the night as an oracle.
This little book walks through those rooms without a dictionary of symbols. It asks what Thomas Aquinas thought a dream actually is, why Teresa and John of the Cross would not cling even to a holy picture, and how to wake from a frightening night without turning grief into a séance. Read it if a dream has unsettled you. Read it if you have been told that Catholics must either dismiss the night entirely or collect it as a second Gospel.
God sometimes used sleep. He is free to do so still. He has already given us more light than we use.
A Silent Homilies booklet. Written to be read in one or two sittings.