Source: https://www.bertha-dudde.org/en/proclamation/4025

4025 Grace.... will.... measure of grace....

April 18, 1947: Book 49

Everything that contributes to the attainment of maturity of soul is grace and thus a gift from God which you receive undeservedly. You must know that you humans, due to your distance from God, are in a state where you unconsciously reject God's love, i.e. His emanation of strength, where you are, so to speak, outside the circuit of love and therefore His strength would not touch you if His greater-than-great love would not make an allowance to you despite your distance from Him; you must know that you would never reduce the distance from God by yourselves. And this attention is therefore an undeserved gift which God certainly offers to everyone but does not force anyone to accept it, but which only becomes effective if the human being is willing to accept it. Thus the human being's soul can mature but it can also ignore the gift of grace and not achieve any spiritual progress. In that case, however, there is no means of perfection either, for then it lacks strength due to a lack of will. God constantly gives because He wants to help His living creations, yet as free independent beings they have free will and are never forced to accept the means of help offered to them, and thus free will is decisive. Consequently, the will is the first thing, although the human being's whole life course can be called a chain of divine grants of grace, yet it is only successful when the human being wants it himself, only then does grace become effective and only then is it recognized as grace. However, the concept of grace is not yet clear to people insofar as they believe that God distributes it differently, that He gives to people at will so that they will also become blessed according to His will, i.e. that they can mature on earth or remain in their imperfection. For them the word of God means a gift from above which one receives while the other goes away empty-handed.... And this view is erroneous, for it gives a completely wrong idea of God's love, which applies equally to all His creatures and excludes none from beatitude, thus it also offers everyone the same opportunity to become perfect. However, the human being can increase or decrease the abundance of grace himself, depending on his attitude towards God, his desire for God's help and the opening of his heart to every supply of grace. He need only give himself completely to God, commend himself to Him and submit his will to God, and he will receive an unmeasured supply of grace which he will then also use according to God's will. And the ascent upwards will no longer be difficult for him, for his devotion to God also assures him God's guidance and support where his earthly path has cliffs and obstacles. And this is the surest sign that God is his guide when the human being is able to hear His voice, when God testifies to His love through His word, for this is the greatest grace a person can be offered on earth.... to be instructed by Him in His will, to receive knowledge from Him which is only offered through the inner voice and to be cared for by Him with a mission which requires a certain degree of maturity.... An extraordinary task also requires an extraordinary allocation of grace which, however, does not arbitrarily touch people from God but requires their will to be completely turned towards God. And thus people can certainly be recipients of grace differently in measure, but never be considered differently by God, but determine themselves the measure of grace they receive. Yet grace inevitably leads the human being to God, he can inevitably become eternally happy if he opens himself to divine grace, for a divine gift also contains strength, and the effect of this strength is spiritual perfection, alignment with God's nature, shaping into love and thus unification with eternal love, which makes unspeakably blissful....

Amen

Translated by Doris Boekers