Source: https://www.bertha-dudde.org/en/proclamation/4105

4105 Selfish love.... Love your neighbour as yourself....

August 14, 1947: Book 50

God instructed you to love each other; He gave you a commandment you must fulfil if you want to be saved. And this commandment requires nothing else but love for Him and your neighbour.... Yet it includes the entire work of improving your soul, which should attain perfection while you still live on earth. Your every thought, word and action should correspond to this commandment of love, it must express itself in your will to give and to please, to help, comfort, encourage and protect.... the human being must do to other people what would please himself were he in need of the same degree of help. Love your neighbour as yourself.... Hence, God has granted the human being a degree of selfish love by which he can always judge how far he fulfils the commandment of neighbourly love. If a person loves himself very much, he also has a duty to give a greater measure to his fellow human being if he wants to comply with God's will. In that case he must also accomplish more kind-hearted deeds.... If a person's selfish love is small and he wants to fulfil God's will, his neighbourly love will exceed the degree of selfish love, and he will find this easier because he will easily be able to let go of earthly possessions and give them to his fellow human beings. But you humans are always expected to practise unselfish neighbourly love, consequently, you must also be able to go without, you must be able to make sacrifices in favour of pleasing a fellow human being. And the more you love a fellow human being, the easier you can do this. But in order to awaken the feeling of love for a fellow human being you must bear in mind that all of you are children of a Father, that all of you came forth from the same strength and therefore all of you are creatures of God's love.... Then you will learn to regard your fellow human being as your brother, you will treat him with love, you will want to help him if he suffers adversity, and your willingness to help will make you happy, because it is blissful in itself and results in spiritual knowledge.... If you give to your neighbour what you desire yourselves, then God will give you what belongs to Him.... He will give you the truth, He will give you light and strength and grace.... He will please you and likewise will only give you possessions which originate from His kingdom, which cannot be offered to you in an earthly way. But He will also bless your possessions in an earthly way by increasing what you sacrifice if it benefits your soul's salvation. If you therefore give because of love for your neighbour, you will not need to starve, for God's love will give you in kind if you are in need, and He is not prudent with His Own but distributes His gifts without measure.... providing you also sacrifice without anxiously calculating what you can do without. If you are impelled to give by love, you will not hesitate or give very little and therefore also receive in abundance from the eternal Love. And if you are incapable of the feeling of love, then you must train yourselves to accomplish unselfish deeds of love, you must look around yourselves and actively intervene with helpful support when you come across hardship. This is God's will, and you should adopt this will as your own, then your kind-hearted activity for your neighbour will make you happy in every way.... you will kindle love in yourselves until it grows into a bright flame which takes hold of everything that enters its vicinity. For love is divine, it comes forth from God and leads back to God again, this is why the commandment of love for God and one's neighbour is the most important commandment which must be fulfilled on earth as well as in the beyond in order to unite with the eternal Love and to attain eternal bliss....

Amen

Translated by Heidi Hanna