The winds of restlessness, selfishness, and sin are sweeping into many hearts and leading them into turmoil and ruin.”
Wind can be extremely dangerous to life. One only needs to think of a storm at sea, a snowstorm, or a desert storm to understand what is meant. Such wind has led many people to ruin—at sea, in snow, and in sand. In Medjugorje, it sometimes happens that wind from Africa brings desert sand with clouds and rain, which dirties the surroundings.
Our Lady tells us that restlessness, selfishness, and sin are spreading throughout the world like the wind, “sweeping into many hearts and leading them into turmoil and ruin.” Truly, restlessness and insecurity are spreading and creeping into people’s hearts due to news of wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, terrorist attacks in some European countries, and through politicians and their thirst for dominance. What are those winds? Media, Internet, social networks, newspapers, mobile phones, television?
How much sin spreads through pornography? What is causing the spirit of selfishness to increasingly influence young people? Isn’t it the wind blowing through the West, because of which many, many Christians fall away from the Church, from faith and prayer?
Gossip and talk about others are like the wind too. How negative conversations about others turn into a wind that carries away someone’s good name and becomes slander! How evil and hatred reach people’s hearts like the wind, infecting and imprisoning them! How cunning evil is—how easily it deceives people, blinds them, and uses them against others!
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- “That is why I invite you, dear children, return to God and prayer so that you may be well in your hearts and in the land on which you live.”
People who managed to return from the sea to land before a storm, or who found shelter when a snowstorm or sandstorm hit the area they were in, were saved. Our Lady invites us to return to God and prayer, because in doing so, we will find shelter and be saved from the winds that bring restlessness, selfishness, and sin.
Our Lady promises us: not only will we be saved, but we will also be well—both in our hearts and on the Earth as a planet. In our hearts, we will have peace and contentment, and in relation to the land on which we live, we will have clarity on how to treat creation properly.
Prayer, Holy Mass, and confession—that is the return to God. Many things such as work, people, worries, and addictions distance us from God, because we don’t have time for prayer and Holy Mass. Sin distances us especially, because it captures and blinds our hearts and leads us in a direction opposite to God’s. That is why Holy Confession is a return to God. Just as the younger, lost son came to his senses, repented, and returned to his father, so confession is our return to the merciful Father.
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- “I love you, dear children, and that is why I do not tire of calling you to conversion.”
We humans usually tire and give up when it comes to those who are on the wrong path, who have fallen into addictions, who have hurt us and distanced themselves from us. But it is not so with Our Lady—she does not tire. She clearly reveals the reason for her tirelessness: Because she loves us! Her love for us is the reason she appears, why she has been with us for so long, why she calls us to conversion and to the path with God.
Undoubtedly, a lack of love or weak love is the reason we tire and why we give up and distance ourselves from those who show weaknesses. We focus only on ourselves, don’t think of others, and don’t help others because we lack love.
Love is the key that opens our hearts, mouths, and hands to tirelessly do good and selflessly help people in various needs. That is why we must look to Mary, learn from her, and pray to the Lord to awaken and strengthen love within us.
Wind also has positive sides: it powers sails, which move ships; windmills, which generate electricity; and it carries pollen from one tree to another, pollinating them and allowing them to bear new fruit… When the love in us becomes greater, who knows—perhaps a good wind will be stirred through us, one that spreads goodness, peace, joy to other people, unity, and forgiveness.
And finally, let us not forget Our Lady’s call to “conversion.” Whom does Our Lady call to conversion? People who have distanced themselves from God and prayer, and who have been caught by the wind of restlessness, selfishness, and sin? Certainly! But let us not see ourselves as uninvited to conversion. That would be a great mistake…