2563 Faith and love....

November 27, 1942: Book 33

Faith and love lead to eternal life, to bliss. But one is inconceivable without the other. Those who live in love are intimately connected to God through love, which is God Himself.... So he also recognizes God in everything that surrounds him.... He sees Him as the creator of all things, Who can accomplish everything He wants and Whom His immense love destines to work in all wisdom. And so he believes in a God of love, wisdom and omnipotence.... he believes that he is His creature, emerged from Him and inseparably connected to Him.... And he also recognizes his purpose and his goal, for love makes him wise, he cannot think otherwise than good and right because he stands in love.... And he recognizes his thinking and knowledge as truth, he is convinced of it, thus he believes.... And again, a person who believes in a loving, wise and omnipotent creator of heaven and earth cannot help but live in love, for this realization, this convinced faith must result in an activity of love, otherwise it is just empty words if the person affirms his faith.... words that lack life.... For if a person does not perform works of love, then there is no wisdom in him either, and thus he lacks the power of knowledge. He lacks faith, even though he wants to testify to it through words. So faith is dead, because living faith inevitably entails a work of love, because whoever recognizes God must also love Him. And God will love him again, and this means that the human being now feels urged to work with love because God's love flows towards him as strength which impels him into action. However, faith can vary in strength and therefore the loving person must also struggle for strong, unshakeable faith.... For a weak faith also jeopardizes the work of love or reduces it. The deeper a person's faith is, the more eagerly he endeavours to keep God's commandments, which demand unselfish love for his neighbour. The strength of faith thus determines a person's activity of love, and therefore one can confidently doubt a person's faith or describe it as a dead faith if he ignores the commandments of love, even if he tries to feign a deep faith through words. For faith and love cannot be thought of without each other, because he who stands in love must also believe, for love is power from God, which also leads man into realization. But recognizing something means believing in the truth of it. The human being capable of love will therefore also have profound faith, for God Himself guides him into realization, that is, He enlightens him so that he can now believe with full conviction that his faith is a living one, that he works with love because he believes....

Amen

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