Joseph's Dream

Joseph has plunged into the mystery God has held out before him...What openness to God on Joseph's part, what willingness to start again and build his life according to God's latest designs!...Suddenly, from the heart of eternity, the lightning of divine revelation interrupts Joseph's human cogitations. By keeping the stage of his soul as empty as possible of all human accoutrements, Joseph has allowed God to enter as in as principal actor. Human meditation - protracted, labored, anguished - and divine illumination - sudden, intense, incontestable - go well with one another, call out to one another. Joseph's dark puzzlement, in piety before God, unwittingly invites illumination to come to his soul...It is in a dream that God speaks to him... 

Gaetano Gandolfi, Joseph’s Dream, c. 1790, oil, 95 cm X 76 cm., private collection. Reflection by Father Simeon.