Reality and dreams

The idea of measurement brings comfort to us because our analytic mind seeks to quantify what is real. The text today from the Book of Zachariah in the Roman CatholicLectionary, is set in the time of the return of the Jews to Jerusalem after the exile in Babylon. Friar Jude Winkler tells us of their struggle to restore the village and build a small Temple. Those who hear Zachariah praise God for His Presence with a people who will be numerous and protected by God must have challenged him with that phrase heard often by the dreamer, “Get real”. Often our spiritual being is open to the possibility of images and dreams of great kingdoms of joy, peace and prosperity, much like the images presented in the canticle today from the Book of Jeremiah. The Gospel from Luke has Jesus restate to His disciples that the Son of Man, the glorious figure from the Book of Daniel, to whom Jesus compares Himself, will be betrayed into human hands. This picture of reality is very difficult for them to reconcile with the Davidic Messiah who is supposed to restore Jerusalem to former glory. The tension in our person between knowing with too much certainty that it “is what it is” and seeking that mountaintop intimacy with the Spirit of God which is our experience in relationship with Jesus is indicating to us that through faith, which permits us to extend beyond our limitations, we should trust that both extremes and all experience is our journey with Jesus.