Saint John Bosco’s Prophecy: How the Devil Captures Us Today
Saint John Bosco’s dream of 1865, in which the devil walks into a church and shows the young a magic lantern. What the Biographical Memoirs actually say, and what it means for us today.
On May 1, 1865, Don Bosco told his boys at Valdocco about a dream: the devil had come into the church and, along the communion rail, was showing each boy a different image, the one he knew would capture him. The account is written in the eighth volume of the Memorie Biografiche (Biographical Memoirs), and that is where we read it, word for word.
To see why it deserves to be taken seriously, we start with another dream, eleven years earlier: the one in which a court footman announced “great funerals at Court” to King Victor Emmanuel II, followed by four deaths between January and May 1855. Then we step into the dream of the lantern, read the explanation Don Bosco himself gives, and the remedy he points to. The bridge to the present is our own reading: Don Bosco never speaks of phones, but the mechanism he sees in his dream is strikingly similar to the one we live with every day.
CHAPTERS
0:00 The dream of May 1, 1865
0:39 Who was Don Bosco
1:08 The dream that took a king’s peace
2:02 Four deaths at court, 1855
2:44 The dream of the magic lantern
3:37 To each, a different image
5:07 What the dream meant
5:45 The lantern today
7:31 Breaking the lantern: Don Bosco’s remedy
PRAYER
Write this prayer in the comments, and if you wish, add the name of a young person close to your heart:
“Lord Jesus, guard the eyes of our children and grandchildren, and bring them back to You. Mary Help of Christians, pray for them.”
SOURCES
– G. B. Lemoyne, Memorie Biografiche di Don Giovanni Bosco (Biographical Memoirs), vol. VIII (Turin, 1912), pp. 115-116: the dream of May 1, 1865, its explanation and the remedy. Page numbers refer to the Italian edition.
– G. B. Lemoyne, Memorie Biografiche, vol. V, pp. 177-180: the two dreams of the footman, the letters to the king and the conversation with Marquis Fassati; p. 244: the king’s words, “I don’t have a moment’s peace anymore! Don Bosco won’t let me live!”
– L. Renaldi, I lutti della R. Casa di Savoia: 12 gennaio, 20 gennaio, 10 febbraio 1855 (Turin, 1855): the dates of the deaths at court.
– E. Pilla, I sogni di Don Bosco (introduction, 1961): “Call them dreams, or parables…”
– Memorie dell’Oratorio (Memoirs of the Oratory): the magic tricks at Becchi.
– 1 Peter 5:8.
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