Work on Your Conversion?

I received some newsletters yesterday called The Spirit of Medjugorje.  The Blessed Mother's messages from August 25, 2009 and September 25, 2009 stood out to me.  They read:

8/25:  Dear Children!  Today I call you anew to conversion. Little children, you are not holy enough and you do not radiate holiness to others, therefore pray, pray, pray and work on your personal conversion, so that you may be a sign of God's love to others.  I am with you and am leading you towards eternity, for which every heart must yearn.  Thank you for having responded to my call.

9/25: "Dear Children, with joy, persistently work on your conversion.  Offer all your joys and sorrows to my Immaculate Heart that I may lead you all to my most beloved Son, so that you may find joy in His Heart.  I am with you to instruct you and to lead you towards eternity.  Thank you for having responded to my call."

What stood out is that we are supposed to be working on our conversions.  Working.  Persistently. 
She mentioned it two times in two months.  She even went so far as to say we are not holy enough, and we are not radiating holiness to others.  The people that generally read these messages from the Blessed Mother are people who pray the rosary, go to Mass, and have many devotions.  She must be talking to us.  She wouldn't tell unbelievers that. They aren't the ones reading the messages.   

So the question would be, why aren't we holy enough?  Does that mean we're not saying enough rosaries?  Does it mean we need to add more devotions to our routine?  Are we not wearing enough medals?  Are we not acting nice enough?  Is there something we need to add to our list of holy things to do?  More help at Church?  I don't think so.  I don't think that's what she is addressing.  "Doing" these things does not "radiate" holiness to others.  We always seem to be "doing".  That may be part of the problem. 

We do not make ourselves holy, God makes us holy.   God can only make us holy with our cooperation.  We must not be cooperating. We must not be allowing God to work in us.  To heal us.  To transform us.  Are we too busy "doing" and not being "still" and allowing God to make us truly holy?  There seems to be a huge obstacle to being "still" in this day and age.  Somewhere, we picked up the idea that we constantly have to be moving, talking, acting, creating, doing.  We have a very hard time saying "no."

God had a very hard time with me and being still.  It was nearly impossible.  It was literally a suffering for me.  I hated it.  I always felt the need to be moving, cleaning, doing.  That's the way I was raised.  If you had time to sit down, then you had time to wash windows or walls.  To just sit and be were looked down upon.  Scorned actually.  I used to feel guilty for taking the time to pray.  I was sitting and not doing.  That was bad.  I would hurry, get my rosary in, and off I would go again.  I was not able to be still.  Even my mind would not be still.  Always a list of what I had to do going through my head during my rosary.  I was horrible.  That really was not prayer at all.  I was throwing my prayers up there, and taking off.  Thankfully, God is very patient.  He is also a very good teacher, like any good Father.

I had no understanding of holiness.  I thought holiness was defined by what you did.  You were supposed to do "holy" things.  That made you holy.  Or at least you tried to be.  If sinning and living a life of sin were "evil", then praying and trying to avoid sin must be "holy".  I think that may be part of the problem the Blessed Mother is addressing.  We don't understand what it means to be holy, therefore, we are not able to share this with others.

After my "purification" started, I was led to a prayer group.  As part of the formation that is based on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, we were prayed over for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit.  One of the women said, "God wants you holy".  I was struck for a second.  What?  I was thinking "what more can I do?" but didn't say anything.  I waited until I saw a priest I was talking with at the time, and asked him what that meant.  He told me that it is God that makes us holy, we do not make ourselves holy.  To be made holy is to be set apart from the world to belong to Christ, to belong to God for His service.  We must cooperate, however, by letting go of the world.  He gave the example of the altar at church.  It is up on three steps because it is holy...set apart from the rest of the church.  I had never heard this before, or maybe I did and forgot it!  But, it was timely and very helpful.   

They say God cannot violate our free will.  If we choose to run and refuse to be still, God will allow it.   I discovered that God can, however, use other means to bring about His will that do not violate our will.  Like taking away our means of running.  He is so wise! 

He really left me no choice but to cooperate.  I lived in the middle of a cornfield and was without a car for five months.  It was the first time in my life that I didn't have the means to run.  I had to be still.  No money, no car.  Just me, my two children, a dog, and God.  In the cornfield.  I didn't like it.  I was like an impetuous child made to sit in a chair.   I let God know that, too.  He let me know a few things, too.  What started out as a very rocky father/daughter relationship turned into the most spiritually rewarding time of my life.  Because I couldn't go anywhere, I could relax.  I could spend as much time as I wanted in prayer, listening for once.  Learning.  Receiving.  It's amazing what can happen when you actually give good, quality time to God.  It's no different than children receiving good, uninterrupted  time with their parents.  The relationship becomes something you enjoy...the battle ends...the power struggle.  In this case, I lost the power struggle being I was the child.

I began to desire holiness.  I wanted to be who God created me to be. I desired "freedom".  I didn't really know what that meant at the time, but I liked the sound of it. Freedom.  I wanted to do what He wanted me to do, not running all over doing what I thought was pleasing to Him and others.  I desired healing.  I was shown how much I needed it. I realized I was actually very tired, very beat up and in need of God.  I say this only because what you may see as hardship, loss, and abandonment, may really be God arranging for you to be still so that He can make you holy.  If we cannot be still on our own, God has his ways of creating the environment necessary to achieve His will.  He has his ways of removing distraction, ties, anything that keeps you from Him.  He gave me a very valuable explanation in prayer once when I was complaining about my circumstances.  He said:

"You have children.  When you want to teach them something, don't you need their undivided attention?  Are you able to teach your children when they are talking, getting up, running around and distracted by every little thing?  Don't you make them sit and look at you when you desire to impress something upon them?  Then why do you complain when I, as your Father, do the same to you?"

Enough said.  I understood.

My point is that with all of the suffering, job loss, loss of every kind....try to see it as an invitation.  An opportunity.  Our first response when things begin to fall apart is to redouble our efforts at doing something to fix it...we become very busy.  Not just physically, but mentally and emotionally, too.  It doesn't really seem like a good time to start sitting down and being still!  It might even look rather foolish...like the house is burning down and you're sitting, communing with God.  The most obvious reason we can't be still is that we don't trust God.  We don't trust that He is in control while we're sitting.  It is a hard lesson to learn, but the rewards are tremendous.

I'll end with a definition of holiness, according to St. Thomas Aquinas:

Hence St. Thomas defines holiness as that virtue by which a man's mind applies itself and all its acts to God, he ranks it among the infused moral virtues, and identifies it with the virtue of religion, but with this difference that, whereas religion is the virtue whereby we offer God due service in the things which pertain to the Divine service, holiness is the virtue by which we make all our acts subservient to God.

From the Catholic Encyclopedia

This explanation lets us see that "religion" and "holiness" are two different things. Maybe that is where the confusion lies.  Religion being our service to God, which most of us do.  Holiness being our lives completely subservient to God and His Commandments.  There is a difference.  So, maybe the Blessed Mother is telling us we need to take our "religion" a step further.   We need to allow God to make us holy so that we may radiate that to others.  The joy of belonging to and living completely for God.  That would definitely "radiate."
Especially in this very insecure world.  People will begin to see the value of holiness in us, the security of a relationship with God.  They will then desire that, too.  Maybe what we are trying to "convert" people to is "religion" when our focus should be "holiness."