I don’t know about you, but there are many nights I go without dreams. And if I do have dreams—for scientists say that on average we dream 3-6 times a night—I don’t remember having them.

When I do dream it’s a rather ridiculous scenario. From the Christian perspective, there are two types of dreams: natural and supernatural. Scientists theorize that natural dreams come from our subconscious. They are the reawakening during sleep of things in our imagination and on our minds that we have thought about, worried about or experienced during the day.

Besides natural dreams, the Scriptures also teach us that people can have supernatural dreams. These dreams are divinely inspired and are “charismatic”. Divine inspiration means that they come from God. “Charismatic” means that they are not for the sake of the individual receiving them alone, but that they are inspired for the sake of helping someone else.

For example, St. Joseph’s dreams in the Gospel of Luke. St. Joseph was instructed by God in his dreams in two ways. First, he was told to take Mary into his home as his lawful and innocent wife, since the child in her womb was conceived by the Holy Spirit.  Secondly, he was warned about Herod’s intent to kill the child Jesus and thus he should take Him and his mother to Egypt. On both occasions, St. Joseph’s dreams were given to him for the sake of helping someone else.

Something similar happened in the case of St. John Bosco. Beginning at the age of nine, Bosco began having divinely inspired dreams. His dreams were packed with vocational and supernatural meaning. The first divinely inspired dream revealed to him his future mission as an educator.

Instead of recounting the whole dream, I want to focus on only one small, but very important part: its Marian connection. But, if you are interested in reading the whole story after finishing this post, here’s a link.

What’s the Marian connection?

The Marian connection is Our Lady as the font of wisdom and confidence. You see, at only nine years old, when Bosco was shown his vocation to be an educator, he was worried. He was worried he did not have the skills nor the “know how” to turn undisciplined children—who were characterized as wolves in his dream—into well-formed and virtuous children—which appeared as lambs.

Bosco told his interlocutor that he was only a “poor and ignorant child”. Then he went on to ask, “And who are you to order me to do such an impossible thing?”

To which, his visitor replied, “Precisely because you think these things are impossible, you must make them possible by obedience and learning.”

The young Bosco then asked, “Where and how can I get such learning?”

“I will give you a Teacher, under whose discipline you will become wise. Without her, all wisdom is foolishness.”

The “Teacher” promised to him was Mary. It was Our Lady, Seat of Wisdom, who would be the one that John Bosco would need to trust in and be obedient to as a future educator.

St. John Bosco’s dream and its Marian connection is equally formative for us. As men and women consecrated to Mary in filial slavery of love, we too must entrust all seemingly impossible tasks—especially those that touch upon our vocations, missions, and apostolates—to her. If we want to be wise and confident in all that we do, then we must be obedient to Mary’s will and docile to her ways. To act otherwise would be foolish.

Seize the day and wisely make it all Hers!