Source: https://www.bertha-dudde.org/en/proclamation/1611a

1611a Free will indispensable for redemption.... (self-redemption)....

September 14, 1940: Book 25

By virtue of free will, the human being has it in his power to redeem himself, he is only weak and powerless without the application of the means of grace, without the supply of spiritual strength. Grace is everything that God bestows on man in His love, if he desires it.... To be in God's favour means to be constantly cared for by His love, and this love intervenes wherever a person is in danger. If his soul is in danger, divine love will help him as long as the person himself does not resist this help. The most effective means of grace is prayer. Prayer is the means of receiving unmeasured graces, which means repeated strength and help in all needs and sufferings of the soul. Prayer causes the good spiritual beings to make themselves helpfully available to the human being, that is, to hand over the strength they possess in abundance to the person requesting strength in prayer. For then the free will of man has been active to request power from God. Prayer is therefore a means of receiving unmeasured graces. And a further means of grace is the activity of love.... For with every act of unselfish neighbourly love, divine grace flows to him in the form of divine love, and this urges the human being into ever more active loving activity, and only through love shall the human being redeem himself, thus the more he practises love and thereby receives God's grace, that is, the more strength he receives for his own redemption. No strength or grace can flow to a person who merely fulfils some form; his innermost heart must urge him to pray and to love.... Only then can grace be imparted to him. And worry, illness and affliction are evidence of divine love, for they are intended to bring the human being into a state of using the means of grace, thus to appeal for help in prayer, and to carry out deeds of love for his neighbour. And God thereby directs people such that they desire to stand in the rays of the divine sun of grace; in a manner of speaking, He proposes the means of grace to them so that they make use of them. But the spiritually perfect person is of the same will as God and, as the executor of the will, endeavours in the same way to influence the beings on earth such that they make use of the means of grace.... They stimulate the human being's will to be lovingly active and to appeal to God for His grant of strength.... Only then shall free will be used correctly, only then shall the human being be able to redeem himself, for he does everything with God's help, he makes use of God's grace, and thus lives in and with God.... Amen

Translated by Sven Immecke