Source: https://www.bertha-dudde.org/en/proclamation/1129

1129 Thinking ability and understanding of the world.... feeling of the heart....

October 8, 1939: Book 20

It is not the ability to think which is decisive for the inner spiritual state of a person, and it is not the greatness of the worldly intellect which determines the soul's state of maturity, but only the degree of love of the person who, regardless of his earthly abilities and situation in life, tries to draw close to God and feels this desire in his deepest heart. And this truly requires neither worldly wisdom nor extraordinary intellectual activity, but everyone can cultivate the feeling of the heart, since it lies dormant in him as a seed and it is every person's own business to bring this seed to bloom, and every person also has the ability to do so.... Where else would God's justice be.... if He wanted to make the conditions for achieving perfection easier for one person and more difficult for another?.... The same opportunity and the same favours are available to all human beings, even though it may seem that the natural conditions are so different that they must therefore also lead to different developments. The simple, uncomplicated thinking of one person seems to have the advantage that faith is easier for him to accept.... on the other hand, however, the human being, whose intellectual thinking is exceptionally developed, is able to think through the miracles of divine creation in greater depth, and thus he, who has the opportunity to gain insight into God's creation in the most comprehensive way, could likewise become a believer if his arrogance did not prevent him from doing so through this intellectual knowledge, and this, in turn, is precisely a resistance which he must voluntarily overcome for the purpose of perfection.... The same conditions are imposed on all beings, and thus every being has to fight against the same weaknesses and faults, only some succeed in overcoming them in a shorter time, whereas others often succumb and thereby reinforce precisely these faults and thus require ever greater strength in order to be able to master them, and thus many an ugly characteristic will express itself more strongly because the fight against it was not directed at it from the start but had previously only contributed considerably to its increase and now all the greater resistance is required. Thus it never has any disadvantage on the soul's life or the possibility of the soul's maturing whether the human being's thinking moves in smaller or larger districts, for in the end only the heart's receptivity is decisive, but it is each individual's own business to develop it or to let it atrophy, for God's love has endowed all His earthly children with this ability and only left it up to the individual beings to utilize it according to their will....

Amen

Translated by Doris Boekers