02/07/2021DREAM:  I was at church standing next to my spouse waiting for Mass to begin. As the celebrant processed up to the altar, I noticed that the celebrant was a woman.  My spouse went up to the celebrant and said, “Come down from there and admit to your improper relationship with this person.” The person was another woman standing in the aisle.  The celebrant came down from the altar and admitted to the relationship.  

Next, it was as if I was divided into two people—one of me was an observer of the scene in front of me, and the other of me was a participant in the scene. As the observer, I saw myself and my spouse outside standing by our car.  I heard myself say to my spouse, “The celebrant may have admitted to the relationship, but don’t be fooled; they are going to come after us.”  I then saw myself duck in fear as the celebrant came outside and walked toward her own car.  As the observer, I yelled out to my spouse to duck down and get out of sight, too, but he just stood firm.  I then saw myself, the participant, slowly stand back up, tall and straight next to my spouse.  As the observer, I yelled out to myself: “What are you doing?  Stay hidden!”  But, as the participant, I refused to go back into hiding and stood firm at my spouse’s side.  I then heard a voice say: “This is good; it must be exposed; do not be afraid.” After hearing the voice, I was no longer divided, and I was standing firm at the side of my spouse.

REFLECTION:  This is what makes sense to me.  My spouse is our Lord.  Imposing his rightful power and authority, our Lord has commanded his Church to expose the homosexual wrongdoings of his priests (“Come down from there and admit to your improper relationship with this person”).  The Church has humbly had to admit to the scandals that have clouded her reputation.

So where do I, an ordinary person, fit into this scenario?  Based on the second half of my dream, I believe our Lord has asked that I share a not so nice personal life experience with the Church that is our Lord’s Church.  The Church that I love; the Church that I honor; the Church that I obey, and that I still support today with all my heart.Back in 1999-2000 I worked part-time at Our Lady of Sorrows parish office in West River as the parish secretary.  Another parishioner worked as the accountant part-time.  We both had young children, so we traded babysitting during our work shifts.  During that time, I started having dreams about the church being in trouble.  In one dream, I saw my pastor, Fr. Mark, go into a dressing room and come out in a woman’s bathing suit (perhaps that is why the celebrant in my dream was a woman).  Honestly, even after the dream, Fr. Mark was not scary to me. I felt like he was more of a victim than a predator.    

A very short time later, a man came into the office and asked for the pastor.  I recognized the voice of a man who called frequently, asking to speak with “the pastor”.  My preschooler was with me at work that day because my coworker was not able to babysit.  The man put his hands on my son and started caressing my son’s shoulders.  I saw a darkness in this man, the spirit of a predator.  That was when the fear, fear for my child, set in.  I left work that day not sure what to do.

I shared my dream with another co-worker who was also a close friend.  She was Fr. Mark’s housekeeper.  She told me she knew of the man who came into the office. She told me that her young pre-teenage son had been deeply affected by finding homosexual pornography at Fr. Mark’s house.  She never reported Fr. Mark; she felt she should just pray for him.  Her son was living on the streets and in shelters.  I was a single mother of five, but I would fight to keep that from happening to my children.  I made the decision to never return to work.  I wrote to the Archdiocese of Washington because I had already been contacting ADW about dreams and understandings that I had. This was before the scandal in the Church first broke out, so my complaint was easily hidden away and never responded to.I believe the reason I was both an observer and a participant in my dream is because our Lord was giving me messages to protect my own family, but at the same time, our Lord was giving warnings to the Church.  Warnings that Church authorities chose to ignore.

At that time, upon our Lord’s request to me, I sent many letters to then Cardinal McCarrick detailing my dreams and my understandings.  My understandings may have been vague to me, but you cannot tell me he did not recognize the warnings our Lord was giving.  He was in the thick of the mire. He was given an opportunity to begin correction within the Church before all was made public.  

So why now, after my children are grown and the scandal has been made public, would our Lord ask me to bring my dreams to Church authorities once again?  I keep going back to the part of the dream where I warned: “The celebrant may have admitted to the relationship, but don’t be fooled; they are going to come after us.”  I do not know any particulars.  I’m sure I know less than you yourselves are aware of, but I do believe that the Church is in for even stronger demonic attacks.  The devil does not just want to weaken the Church, he wants to annihilate the Church.  Our Lord is again giving Church authorities waring of coming demonic attacks.  Part of that warning is through my dreams from our Lord. You are given an opportunity which I believe you should value in the depths of your souls.Why would our Lord use me?  Because I am the smallest of the small, the most ordinary of the ordinary, a little nobody.  If you have the love of the Gospel in your heart, you will know that this is exactly the type of person our Lord would decide to use.

Whenever I am given messages for people, my message is not really news to them.  The message serves only as confirmation, and usually supplies a direction on how to go forward.  If you have an open heart, this message will ring true.  Please, pray with an open heart to the Holy Spirit to at least explore possibilities.  Please allow me to help the Church that I would give my life for.  

I would like to add a side note about forgiveness.

During that time when I was under attack by family and Church, in my prayer, I had been pouring out my heart to our Lord of how no one cared about what was happening in my life.  No one cared that my little family was threatened.  One family member even said, well, you are not threatened by the priest; this is just a private sin.  (Actually, there is no such thing as a “private” sin.  The priest may not have been a predator, but his lover was, and his relationship brought his lover into contact with young boys.)

Anyway, shortly after that, I attended Mass at my older children’s school.  Then Cardinal McCarrick came to celebrate the Mass—the same man who did not respond to the letters of warnings and complaint I sent him.  The Gospel that day was from Matthew Chapter 18, about forgiveness, that we should forgive each other “seventy times seven times.”  The then Cardinal repeated over and over the importance of forgiveness.  I felt like our Lord was giving me a special message in response to my heart’s pouring to him.  During that homily, I forgave the then Cardinal for his lack of action.  When his public humiliation came about, I had no satisfaction in my heart.  My heart only felt a deeper wish that I could help my Church in some way.  Be careful what your heart longs for.

The morning of this dream, I realized the direction our Lord was sending me.  A direction toward the authorities.  My first instinct was to hide (duck down) and say: “Are you crazy?” (sorry for the impertinence, Lord).  I have a wonderful life with my own little hidden spirituality that I share with the occasional person our Lord puts in my path.  But the voice in my dream said: “This is good; it must be exposed; do not be afraid.”  If he wants to expose me once again to ridicule, what is it to me?  If he says it is good, then it is good.  I trust him, I love him.  I know from experience that regardless of the trauma that I may suffer, he will truly stand at my side.  I have nothing to fear because my heart is pure in its understandings and desires.  When I go to the pearly gates, it won’t matter if I have succeeded or not, because I will be able to say: “I didn’t run away, I sincerely tried.”

With the love of Christ in my heart,Annie Thomas
2021-0207 dream send to adw
