Source: https://www.bertha-dudde.org/en/proclamation/5491

5491 Earthly adversity should result in contacting God....

September 20, 1952: Book 60

Everything on earth is given to you for you to achieve perfection.... You can mature in every situation, but you can also obstinately and with bitterness regress in your development because you have free will, which will never be compelled by external influences to adopt a specific attitude. You have to want to ascend from the bottom of your heart, then everything will also serve you in your aim to become perfect. For then you will be seized by God's will to love, Which only ever creates opportunities for you to shape yourselves, and to Whom you merely have to give yourselves in order to be raised up. You all are granted a measure of grace; how can you possibly fall or relapse in your spiritual development if you make use of this grace? For the blessings are a reliable and effective means of help, they are a special kind of help which only aim upwards, for whatever is offered to you by God's love will also lead to Him.

Divine gifts of grace contain exceptional strength and therefore should not be spurned. Hence every earthly adversity should also be considered as a blessing, because it can lead to progress if it is considered as such, if the adversity makes the human being aware that he ought to direct his gaze upwards in order to appeal for help from the One, Who can and always wants to help. With this prayer you establish contact with God, which always signifies another step upwards, for turning to Him in itself is already demonstrating your will, which is being tested by God in your earthly life. But it is worse for you humans if earthly hardship does not result in contact with God.... Then you will often also receive help, but from the one to whom you, due to your will, still belong, whom you have not turned away from. Then God will not be able help you, but you will always receive help, as it were, from the one whom you willingly serve due to your attitude. God wants to be recognised, and He will often come to you in the shape of suffering and adversity.... But as soon as you take flight to Him, as soon as your thoughts turn towards Him, you can also be absolutely certain that He will help you, that He will not leave you on your own if you are in serious difficulties. No thought fades away, no call remains unheeded, for the slightest thought affects Him and motivates Him to help you. And everything He does is only determined by His love, which applies to you and your perfection. There is no adversity which could not be resolved, for nothing is impossible for Him, yet He shapes everything in a way that it will help you achieve perfection, if only you always think of Him and commend yourselves to His grace....

Amen

Translated by Heidi Hanna