Source: https://www.bertha-dudde.org/en/proclamation/1588

1588 The essence of love....

August 30, 1940: Book 25

The epitome of everything spiritual is love.... It is a power which expresses itself in the emotional life, and which makes you happy in different ways depending on its strength and depth.... It is a feeling which seeks connection with the object it grasps, which wants to draw everything towards itself because the union is unspeakably happy. There is no connection more intimate than the union of love. There is no power stronger than love; love is the ultimate fulfilment and the epitome of all bliss. For love is divine, it is the stream that flows ceaselessly through the universe in order to ceaselessly collect what wants to distance itself and merge with it for its unspeakable happiness.

Love is unchanging in itself, it can only choose as the object of its desire something that is distant from God.... And then it is an inverted love that is directed towards evil, that is, it seeks union with what has distanced itself from God. It is the same feeling that expresses itself, but the object of this feeling is a different pole, a counterforce. And so, love can turn towards one pole or the other, and turning towards one always means turning away from the other. Love is therefore, as it were, a feeling that has its origin in God, which is sent out into the universe and can now seek union again with its Creator as well as with His opposite pole, which likewise needs the emanation of strength from God, love, in order to be able to rule and to be powerful. Every gift of love from this very power increases it, every reflection to the place of origin reduces the opponent's power and increases the divine power.... Everything that is united by love flows inexorably towards the starting point of love, and since love is something spiritual, something intangible but only perceptible with the soul, the starting point also has to be something spiritual...., something unfathomable, imperceptible to the physical senses. However, if the soul's sensations are wasted on earthly things by seeking contact with earthly things, that is, with matter, which belongs to the realm of darkness, then it is simultaneously seeking contact with the Lord of Darkness. It moves away from its starting point, it longs for the opposite pole of God, and therefore it is a wrong love that seeks union with everything spiritual that is in opposition to God. The love for possessions, for earthly happiness, for earthly life and for all matter is such a wrong love which does not lead to God but to His adversary. And the union with what it desires only triggers an imperfect feeling of happiness, which is limited in time and only signifies an illusory happiness for the being which nourishes such love, whereas pure divine love, which applies to the spiritual, triggers indestructible happiness on earth already and one day in the beyond, which outlasts eternities.... For this love leads to God, Who is love Himself....

Amen

Translated by Sven Immecke