Source: https://www.bertha-dudde.org/en/proclamation/6813

6813 Fulfilment of humanly decreed commandments will not replace actions of love....

April 23, 1957: Book 73

You humans have to understand that there is no substitute for loving actions, that you will not be able to acquire eternal bliss by other means as long as you ignore My commandments of love, as long as you do not act with unselfish love for your neighbour. Whatever else is recommended to you, apart from this active love, as being beneficial or promising happiness, is worthless and will not lead you one step forward in your perfection. And you will be offered much that will supposedly result in happiness.... Thus you often disregard the only helpful means to bliss. I required nothing else from you humans apart from complying with My commandments of love.... I gave you no other commandments but those which only ever necessitate your love for your neighbour, I only preached those guiding principles which intended to improve the relationship between yourselves and your fellow human beings, because I wanted to kindle the love in you which you were lacking and which had caused your wretched situation. And thus My continued concern simply relates to increasing your willingness to love, because the ability to love is inherent in all of you but your will to put it into practice is extremely poor. Consequently, only a person who, like Me, will simply preach love can be My true representative on earth, because he alone will show people the right path which leads to Me, to blissfulness.

However, you should not believe that you can replace your deeds of love with other actions or customs; you should not believe that I will be content with the compliance of commandments which were not decreed by Me and whose implementation without love is completely worthless. You won’t receive any ‘blessings’ for it because I will not take notice of such actions and customs and neither will it save souls, because these are just human promises which I will never be able to sanction. Only love will save you from regressing into the abyss, only love will guide you into perfection, and love will always express itself with actions, because love will urge a person from within to work in divine order.

But you humans are seized by a certain amount of indifference regarding My commandments of love because you were led into thinking wrongly.... Because you were urged to comply with ecclesiastical commandments which people added to My commandments as their own work.... You now fearfully attempt to meet these ecclesiastical commandments, but rarely or never pay attention to My requirements yet nevertheless believe to live a just and Christian life. This is a serious error which was also brought into the world by My adversary.... Because your only purpose of earthly life is to kindle love and let it flare into the brightest light because this denotes the unification with Me from Whom you once separated. However, only love will be able to achieve this unification, and not the means which were given to you as ‘commandments’ for the attainment of eternal life, such as formal prayers, indulgences, actions and the conferring of blessings which are known as ‘sacraments’, which must only be regarded as ceremonies and formalities and will not provide you with any spiritual success, neither on earth nor in the kingdom of the beyond.

My adversary tried to prevent what the compliance with My commandments of love will achieve by distracting people’s attention from them with external formalities and false teachings and presenting his arrangements as their priority.... Because he knew that he would find many victims, because love required people to make an effort and they are not gladly willing to make sacrifices. Thus time and again love has to be emphasized to be the first and most important, time and again I have to remind people of My commandments of love for God and other people, time and again I have to instruct them that everything else is useless without love and that actions of love cannot be replaced by anything else.... But this teaching is not taken seriously, people prefer to follow those humanly added commandments more readily because My adversary still has great influence over such people and is trying to prevent their return to Me by all means. Nevertheless, My teaching of love, which I preached on earth, is known to people and everyone with genuine aspiration will also recognise it as a priority and not be content with pointless outward appearances, with everything that did not originate from Me....

Amen

Translated by Heidi Hanna