Roc Estello
At Sainte-Baume, where Mary Magdalene lived and died, near Marseille, France. True charity, in fact, consists not only in giving oneself, as is often said, but in radiating through our words and actions, the presence of the love of God that dwells in us.
Léandre Lachance and his wife Élisabeth gave us the grace to come to host the Family Retreat this summer at Roc-Estello. Léandre receives in his deep heart Messages of Jesus of which he is only the “Commissioner” – but if he totally disappears before these Messages, it remains that the presence of his couple with in their heart 5 children and 16 grandchildren – was a living testimony of the quality of the Messenger. Here he is speaking about the spirituality of the Chosen Ones:
I. To be a Chosen One of Jesus
We are all “Chosen of Jesus”. We must thus think together about what it means to be a “Chosen One of Jesus”. Afterwards, we will have to ponder about “how to answer the call” and “how to live it”. We all have the same role to play: to become garden hoses of His Love throughout the world, and in this role, we must be connected to the source, that is, to be connected to God in His love. And the most important moments of our life are those where we are in prayer, in intimacy with Him, and where we allow Him to do the unity in us: He with us, us with Him, in Him.
So, first, the hose needs to be connected, but second, the faucet needs to be open. Many people are connected, but the tap remains closed. The “Chosen” are there to open the faucets, and the faucets open with a Yes.
This Yes that we give to Jesus, is to give him all the freedom to come to work in us, so that his Love can pass through us to reach others.
Thirdly, there is always a great danger in this kind of hose, it is that there are obstructions in the hose. Obstructions are often our demands, our expectations, our ways of seeing things.
The Lord chooses us to build the new civilization of Love, this is what John Paul II said in 1997 regarding the current times we are living in: “The love of God will envelop the new century, it will be like a time of grace, as the fulfillment of a plan of love for all humanity and for each of us. Do not be afraid, it is not an old world that ends, it is a new world that begins; a new dawn seems to be born in the sky of history. “
At the same time that the Holy Father said this, I was inspired to write, “we are now at the dawn of the most beautiful story in the world”. This is not what you heard in the newspapers, but me, this is what I am coming to tell you, is that we are at the dawn of the most beautiful story in the world and God chooses us to associate with Him, so that this new kingdom may come .
The Chosen Ones of Jesus are those who give up their own will to fulfill the will of God
To understand what it means to be a Chosen one, you can read number 35 of the first volume:
” My little one, the Love I have for you is boundless. “
This is the first thing we have to convince ourselves. “The Love of God for us is boundless, it is beyond anything you could imagine and conceive. If I poured into you the immensity of My Love, you would be unable to accept or contain it. Your heart would burst. I want you to know that there are reserves of Love for you and for each of My children on earth; these reserves are like beautiful gifts.“
The Lord chooses us to give us gifts; He chooses us to pour out his Love into us and, when we welcome Him, we are transformed in His Love. By being transformed by His Love, we become instruments in His Hands or watering hoses where His Love passes to reach others.
It is not our action, it is His action, that you will never finish unpacking. You will be continually in an ever growing wonder. It will be Jubilation and again Jubilation and more and more Jubilation.
The love of the Father is so great that He desires that this Love, which was reserved for Heaven, may extend to the earth, and it is for very soon, that is to say that it is already begun for the chosen ones you are. I wrote this in 1997 and I realize that it is more and more true in 2004.
This love is so great and pure that it cannot coexist with evil. He chose to live in the pure and righteous hearts that accept Him.
For the times that we live, I would like to read you a little passage of the number 46 of the first volume:
“… On this very day, not tomorrow, nor in six months, nor in a year, but on this very day, the Heavens are open; a multitude of Angels and Saints are among you to guide you, to accompany you, to bring about the great passage that leads you to the fullness of Love.”
You have only one thing to do: give your consent and repeat it if necessary, so that all ties are cut. May your Yes be Yes to welcome Love. You are sitting at the table of the heavenly feast. The Angels and the Saints await your consents to serve you.
You even have the privilege to choose the Saint to be at your service, to guide and accompany you, to make known to you what is on the menu and by what you must begin in order to allow you as quickly as possible to satisfy your hunger and thirst for Love … Often this hunger and thirst for love has been repressed as a result of wounds and the Lord tells us:
“Do not be afraid, let yourself be loved, it is My Love that I pour into you, I give you the holy angels to accompany you. “
It seems that we have tasted this Love of God at the moment of our creation, of our conception, and it is this Love that we are constantly seeking throughout our life.
All of us are invited to this feast, regardless of your social status, the state of our clothes or our sinfulness. We are all invited.
The first Yes you have to give is to accept that God loves you. It’s simple. The second Yes is to love yourself as God created you. Subsequently, they are Yeses to cut the ties created by the Enemy, and to enter more into the Heart of God.
The path of love is simple and easy for the person who engages himself on it fully and totally
This is the big problem, but once the barrier is crossed, it’s very easy. The most difficult thing is to accept to give our Yes to the Lord and to cut ourselves off, to say no to the currents of thought of the world that are contrary to the will of God.
It is easier to say Yes to God, because Heaven is open today and we are the beneficiaries of all the martyrs and saints who have been in the Church.
The other point that makes the Yes easier is the suffering caused by the ways of the world; to understand that the path of the world is a dead end and that another is offered to us. Only one way is able to meet our hunger and thirst: that of Love.
I would like to end with the gifts, and especially a small gift that we enjoyed Elizabeth and I: it was when our 15 year old grandson called us home and asked us to pray for him, because the next day he had an exam that was causing him a lot of stress.
Then Elizabeth said to him, “I know you have worked well, I will pray for you. “
And I asked him what stressed him so much and he told me it was mathematics. Mathematics, for me, are not a problem. I told him then: “You know, my guardian angel, he’s good at math! Would you like me to lend him to you tomorrow for your exam? “
He replied in the affirmative.
I added: “So, we have a deal! But do not forget one thing: you will have to thank him. “
The next evening, he calls us to say:
“My exam went well! I was serene. My friends even told me: ‘You are truly calm for your exams!’ And I told them that my grandfather had lent me his guardian angel. “
Our grandson continued to use his guardian angel, and sometimes mine … This anecdote is to tell you that you have to believe!
Because Love loves me, I become Love!
Because Love loves you, you become Love!
II. Answering the Call :
What does it mean “to be a Chosen One of Jesus”? There is one point that I would like to share with you, because it seems fundamental to me: He calls us to fertility, whereas we tend to want to be successful.
I, all my life, have worked to be successful in business, I have trained people, salespeople to teach them the path to success.
Then, when I approached a larger journey of faith, I wondered, “Is success important, in the eyes of God? “
I was not given any answers for several years and here, I just got one. So, here is what I perceive: success is the act of the human person with the help of God: if we do not have God, we do not succeed. But what God offers us is fertility, and fertility is the act of God with the human person.
To enter fertility, one must recognize oneself to be small, to place oneself in the arms of God, to fully accept His will in us. When He asks us to do something, we do it and He produces it, this is fertility. This is what I live in the mission of the Chosen Ones: I do very little, and all of a sudden, I realize that, without effort, simply to have obeyed an inspiration, God accomplishes everything.
On the other hand, He wants us to help Him. Since I understand that my role is to be a help for God, I find it much more relaxing.
Let us compare ourselves to a land where only thistles grow: what must be done to make this land fertile? First, it must accept to lose its greenery, cut the brush and burn it. If we compare this to the human being, it is our pride that we must accept to lose, our desire to be seen. After that, the land must be plowed and the grain sowed, the grain will die, then rot.
By rotting, it will let out a seed and this earth will become fruitful. This is a beautiful picture of the paths we have to live to venture from a land that produces nothing to a fertile land. The Lord can use us if we accept to lose our greenery, to allow ourselves to be undone and redone.
Perhaps some people say to themselves about the Chosen ones: “It cannot be for me, with my temperament, with my faults, it is not possible that it is me whom the Lord chooses.”
But to try to explain to you that the Lord is not mistaken when He chooses us, we must know that He does not choose us because of our qualities, He does not choose us because of our talents, He does not choose us because of our piety, but it is only by Love that his choice is thrown upon us.
Let’s look when He chose his first apostles: do you believe that He chose Peter because he had a good temperament? Do you believe that He chose Matthew because he was an honest man and had a good reputation? Do you think He chose Thomas because He was a man of faith? No, it is only through Love that his choice was made on his first apostles; it is through His love that He has transformed them and made them saints and that they have become pillars of our Church, that they have allowed our Church to come to us. It is again through Love that He chooses people on earth to build the Civilization of Love.
Now we are free to say Yes or no. It is important to grasp this element of freedom that we have, faced with the call of God, because no one on earth can oblige us to say Yes to the call of God, just as no one can prevent us from saying Yes to the call of God: it is something that is done between Him and us, for each one of us.
Perhaps when we talk about freedom and being Chosen ones, we think we are going to lose our freedom because we have to give up our will to do God’s.
We say to ourselves: “If I lose my will, I lose my freedom. The opposite is happening because we are God-created beings, to return to God and live in harmony with Him.
In responding to the call of the Chosen ones, we live in harmony with Him, and it is by living in harmony with Him that we discover our freedom. If, on the contrary, we want to live “our freedom”, we become slaves: let us look at the slavery of the senses, that of people who no longer have freedom in front of alcohol, drugs, sex, etc. ; they have lost their freedom, they become slaves.
We were created to be loved and to love; we find our freedom by accepting to be loved by God and loving others. In the same way that the bird that was created to fly finds its freedom by flying, the fish that was created to swim finds its freedom by swimming, we, we find our freedom while loving. But not any type of love, loving with the love of God, knowing us loved, starting from His love of His.
To answer the call of God, it is important to realize that we all need purification, because we start from a world that wanted to build itself without God and we enter a world that lives only for God . To move from one world to another, we need purification. What are the means that God puts at our disposal to purify us?
The first and easiest way, the one that produces the most fruit, is the sacrament of reconciliation, because it comes to erase the totality of our sins, it prevents the evil one from playing with our sense of guilt to prevent us to live the present moment.
To enter into God’s plan, we must become intimates with Him, and to become intimates with Him, we must have time to speak to Him, and the only moment, the best time we have, is the present moment. If we lived fully in the present moment, we would all have become saints.
The task of the evil one is therefore to prevent us from living in the present moment, to steal our present time. He does this by situating us in the past or in the future; in the past by making us feel guilty, in the future by worrying us.
I would like to read you a passage regarding the Chosen ones that helps us to understand, it’s number 87:
” You, My chosen ones of the end times who are reading these lines, you are the ones the Father has chosen to diffuse His overflow of Love. Perhaps you would be tempted to set out on a crusade for this beautiful and great mission, but if you did so immediately, you would make a mistake for that is not the Father’s plan. His plan is that you become Love, that you give your total, unconditional ‘yes’ to letting yourselves be transformed, that you set out immediately on mission on the invisible level through prayer, adoration, the reception of sacraments and fasting as well. While you are on mission on the invisible level, little by little you become Love. As you become Love, you become kindled with the Fire of Love Fire and you kindle the men and women whom the Father sends to you.“
I read an article in the “Stella Maris” that related this true story that makes this point about the invisible:
Two missionary priests in Africa are in the bush and have to follow a path from one mission to another, they arrive at a crossroads where a young man is waiting for them and says to them:
“My mother asked me to come pick you up, because she wants to see you. “
These priests were in the bush where there is no radio or television. How did the young man’s mother know that the two priests were there? Surprised, the two priests ask the young man if it is far.
“No, half an hour’s walk,” replied the young man.
Then, all three of them arrive in a little mud house where a sick old woman tells them:
“Strangers, is it true that there is one God in three persons? “
– Yes.
“Is it true that the second person came to the earth to redeem our sins? “
– Yes.
The old woman continues to ask questions about fundamental points of our faith, and the two priests continue to answer her. Then, after a while, one of the priests asks the lady:
“Where do you take all these questions? Have you been in contact with Christians? “
– Absolutely not.
The two priests then show him an image of Saint Joseph. She tells them:
“I know him, he comes to see me often. “
After asking her more questions, they realize that she is very advanced in her teaching, and the old woman finally asks them:
“Do you want to take some water and wash me? “
She wanted to be baptized. The two priests baptized her, and she told them:
“You can wash my whole family, since they all received the same teachings as me. “
And she added:
“Do you have bread that is not real bread? Will you give me some? “
She wanted to commune, so they made her commune. And the next day she died.
The Lord has ways that we cannot perceive, He has a way of doing things, but what is important is to be convinced of the importance of our prayers, of what the Lord can do through them.
I would like to ask you, as Chosen ones, that every time you read in these volumes a phrase that reaches you and touches you, you make it a universal prayer, and therefore ask Jesus to extend it to the universe, then to touch the hearts of all readers who will read it in turn.
We can be very good Christians and have a relationship of distance with God
I would like to talk to you about another point regarding the relationship with God, that is to say the different types of relationships that we can have with the Lord, and what He calls us to do. We can be very good Christians and have a relationship of distance with God. This is called an alibi relationship. God is at the top, I speak to Him and I establish a relationship with Him, sometimes He inspires me, but it remains a relationship at a distance.
By praying and giving our Yes to the Lord, we come to a second kind of relationship, an alloy relationship, meaning we are united, I am very close to the heart of God, but there is God and there is me. In an alloy – think of jewels – there is gold and silver, they are allied together, but we recognize very well what is gold and what is silver. In this alloy relationship, everyone keeps his identity.
Then, there is the covenant relationship. The covenant is when we are blended in the heart of God. It is no longer the same thing, we no longer recognize what is us and what is God, since we are blended in His Heart. This is what we are called to live, as Christians, as beings of love. I must shrink to enter into this covenant relationship.
A friend once told me that he asked the Lord, “What do you want me to do? “
And the Lord answered him, “You must be blotted out … that I may take all the place. “
The alliance relationship: To enter even more in this relationship with God, humility is what is necessary. Whenever we descend into humility, the Father comes to reveal a part of the divinity He has put in us. It is in the depth of humility that we can reach the height of holiness. In other words, He is taking more and more space in us, and that is where the covenant relationship is built.
III. With Mary, Living The Daily Call, A Spirituality of “Yes”
Here is the prayer I recite every morning. I would like to say it with you because it has changed a lot of things in my behavior. It is a prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, popularized by Cardinal Suenens. There it is :
Lord in the silence of this new day,
I ask you peace, wisdom and strength.
Today I want to look at the world with eyes of love.
Help me to be patient, understanding,
humble, gentle and good.
Please let me see others as you see them,
that I may look past appearances,
and appreciate the goodness in everyone.
Close my ears to all of the gossip,
and save my tongue from speaking evil of others.
Please let only thoughts that bless remain in me.
Today I want to be well-intentioned and fair,
that everybody that who comes to me might feel your presence.
Father, clothe me in your kindness,
that throughout this day I might be a reflection of you.
Amen
I think that, in the civilization of Love in which we are entering, to listen to the Lord, we must accept to be reinitialized. We have adopted life habits, we must accept to be challenged.
The image that I have, if we could compare ourselves to vehicles, is that there are people who are always “in gear”; as soon as we say something, they are gone! There are others who always on reverse: “No, no, not me …”
Then there are others that are parked with the handbrake on: “Me, I’m like that and no one will change me!” When we find ourselves in one of these three positions, it is very difficult for the Lord to go through us, to inspire us. He is waiting for us to stand in neutral: in this way, He can move us forward or backward. We must accept to be pliable, to be able to recognize that He comes to uninstall us through others and that it comes from Him. If we listen carefully, we can feel it.
We are headed for an extraordinary world. I discovered, while reading the breviary, that Saint Bernard speaks to us of the intermediate coming of Jesus. We know that Jesus came once, that He will return in His glory, but Saint Bernard speaks to us of the intermediate coming: the coming into the hearts.
This coming has probably always existed since His first coming, but it comes with much more force in a multitude of people today, because we are very close to His return, and it is to prepare this great return. Then, one must be in joy, living this intermediate coming: He makes us live the graces that were reserved for His coming in glory. He chooses us to prepare hearts for His coming in glory, and He makes us live the jubilation that is reserved for His great return.
The preparation of hearts:
I would like to read you a passage from number 162 of the first volume: ” For each person living on earth at this time, the most important preparation is the one that must happen in the heart.“
A heart prepared for the Great Return is a heart completely transformed by Love, always inhabited by thoughts of peace, joy, Love, and where there is no room for negative thoughts in any form, such as hatred, anger, vengeance, denigration, the non-acceptance of a person (regardless of his or her behavior), the worries and preoccupations of material and spiritual things, or towards oneself: the non-acceptance of what the person is.
It is therefore a perfect heart in every respect; what no one can achieve on their own. Only the Creator has the power to perfect or finish His creation. As He gave a very great freedom to the being He created by Love, He expects from this being a total, unconditional and irrevocable Yes.
See how beautiful it is … He waits! A great Yes to begin and a multitude of little Yes to come and cut all the ties and habits that prevent us from becoming a being of Love. The little Yes, it’s accepting the person who rubs us the wrong way, the person who has a bad temper, etc. And the Lord uses this to come to perfect His creation: we find in another text that suffering is also necessary to the human being, so that the Lord makes it a beauty, like rain to the plant.
When suffering is not welcomed, it prevents the action of God. I prefer to say welcome, because that means we choose freely. In the same way, the person must give a multitude of NO to everything that is contrary to Love or that prevents him from becoming a docile and pliable instrument in the hands of the Father. We must say NO even to a thought: if I think in a negative way, if I think badly of someone, I prevent Love from circulating.
When a suffering is not received, it prevents the action of God
The great purification that is asked of us, and which has begun, will spread on earth, to all the children of the Father. Time is running to give our Yes. As we are the first Chosen ones, a multitude of beneficiaries of our voluntary Yes will have to suffer from our refusals or hesitations.
It is important that we become aware of this. As we are the first to be chosen, our Yes will have a lot of influence around the world, but if we delay, if we hesitate, there are people who could suffer. Our Yes are of much greater importance than you think; a little like the first apostles who were absolutely unaware of the importance of their Yes to follow Christ. Blessed are we to be Chosen, we become Love to give Love. “
Jesus Eucharist:
For me, there are three great pillars on which the civilization of Love rests. It’s important to know them. The first of these pillars, the one that always seems to me the most important, is the Eucharistic Jesus that we worship and receive in our hearts.
There are three high points to meet Jesus Eucharist. There is the moment of consecration, it is a moment from which we must profit to offer Him what we are, what we possess, those we carry in our heart, the souls of purgatory, our ancestors, etc.
The Communion :
The second moment is that of Communion, where we must ask ourselves the questions:
• What place did I give to the Lord when I received Him?
• Did I receive Him for him to find me a job? Or that He solves such problem?
• Or did I receive Him in the hope that He changes my husband, changes my wife? Etc.
I think that in order for Jesus Eucharist to be able to act, we must give Him all the space. We should ask Him, when we receive Him, to make sure there is no more room, that there is no more space in us that is not inhabited by Him.
Adoration:
The third strong point is the moment of Adoration. What should we say? There is nothing to say. We must listen to the Lord, take the time to listen to him. I like to make the comparison with the sun: if we expose ourselves to the sun, it will change the color of our skin, and we do not need to say anything to the sun, we just need to be there, and it will produce his action.
But the sun is just a star created by God, it is far from having the power of God. If the sun is able to transform the color of my skin, imagine when I am in front of God, how He can transform all my being! We must discover this, because it is the first pillar of the Civilization of Love. I am convinced that everything will be renewed from Jesus Eucharist. I think we have not fully discovered it yet.
The second pillar is Mother Mary, the Virgin Mary whose mission is to prepare hearts for the great return of Jesus. The Father entrusted him with the mission of giving Jesus to the world, and in these times which are the last, He gives him the mission of preparing hearts to welcome Jesus. She is able to take us with our faults, no matter what we are: all dirty, badly dressed; she will restore our beauty to present us to Jesus.
The third pillar, thanks to which we are sure at present of not being mistaken, is our Pope, the Holy Father John Paul II [Editor’s Note: This text was written in 2002, during the pontificate of John Paul II]. For me, he is one of the greatest saints in the Church, a man of extraordinary holiness and lucidity!
If we do not want to be mistaken, we just have to check if what we are doing and saying is in keeping with what John Paul II teaches. It is a very important pillar, and I feel that it is because of the great prayers, of the people who say Yes around the world, who pray for John Paul II, that the Lord gives us the grace of leaving him to us again.
The Lord does the rest
Meanwhile, there are a multitude of hearts that are transformed, and we have to follow these guidelines. In everyday life, it is important to realize that we have a little bit to do which is our Yes, and that the Lord does the rest. There is an image that I like very much and that we find in number 193 of the first volume, where Jesus gives us the example of the plane:
” My little one, together – it is important when you read to be aware that Jesus is speaking to you, He is speaking to you – indeed it is truly together, you with Me and I with you, that you are approaching the Father, that you are led to the Father. Since the Father is Love, by approaching the Father you are drawn by Love. It is somewhat like an aircraft approaching a fully active volcano; it will be drawn into the volcano and will catch fire. When a being, a child of the Father created in His image and likeness, is drawn near Him, he is drawn in and transformed by Him, and this happens through no effort on the part of the person concerned. Like the aircraft that needed its power to approach the volcano, once it is drawn into it, it no longer needs its power to be transformed into fire. The same applies for the one approaching the Father: he first needed His power to be drawn to Him. They are the Yes repeatedly given to let him be guided by Me, wrapped in the Cloak of My Blessed Mother and supported by the Holy Angels, accompanied by the Saints of Paradise and of the earth. There comes a moment when it is the pull of the Love of the Father (like the fire of the volcano) that takes charge of everything and transforms and so the person becomes Love (as the aircraft becomes fire). Fortunate are you Léandre, as are many others to be able to be so close to Love and by gravitation become Love.”
Let’s take the time to taste this Love !!
We must have more and more time of silence, meditation and prayers to welcome His Love, to let ourselves be transformed
People who say, “I’d like to pray, but I do not have the time,” I do not believe it. They did not establish prayer as a priority in their lives. But we who are Chosen ones, to enter into this relationship with God, to be transformed by Him, we must accept to give Him time.
This must be the priority of our lives. It is about placing a time of prayer and intimacy with Him. Finally, in trying to give ourselves, we realize that we are the greatest beneficiaries. And we will not have enough of eternity to give glory to God. Lucky band we are!
Testimonials
Dear Fathers Jean-Marie and Pierre, and your radiant community. Glory to the Lord and Mother Mary for the retreat I had the grace to live in Roc-Estello and for having known those who animated it. Thank you to Dominique for her generous availability, as well as to the “Holy Women”. I cherish the unforgettable memory of the talks of my dear friends Léandre and Élisabeth whom I was very happy to see again. The Lord is blessed also for the new knowledge and relationships that have been woven in these days of grace. I live in faithful communion with you, the graces received are its guarantee.
Father Ernest Le Courriard
We give You thanks, Lord Jesus, for the goodness of the welcome and the generosity of Love given in this place of Roc-Estello by Father Jean-Marie, Father Pierre, Léandre and Élisabeth Lachance and all the team volunteers.
Laurent and Nathalie
