Source: https://www.bertha-dudde.org/en/proclamation/6846

6846 Loving activity means transformation of being....

June 7, 1957: Book 73

You should all only make an effort to live a life in which unselfish neighbourly love is expressed. Then you will all still have to discard many faults, you will still have to fight against your self-love, you will have to overcome yourselves, make sacrifices and renunciations in order to help your fellow human beings in their adversity. But step by step you will reach the heights, for only a life of love will ensure your ascent. A life of love therefore also means your change of nature, the change of self-love to neighbourly love, the transformation to the former nature, it means the path to perfection. Nothing else can fulfil the same purpose, nothing else can bring you to the aim than only a life change in love. And you constantly have the opportunity to do so, for living together with people creates such opportunities for you where you can be active in serving love. (7/6/1957) Again and again you will see hardship and help your fellow human beings, you will support them through good encouragement and loving sympathy and also be able to awaken counter-love in their hearts, and again and again you will find yourselves in situations where you can prove your willingness to make sacrifices.... where you have to put self-love aside and think of your neighbour more if you want to comply with God's will. And thereby you will ascend yourselves, for then you will fulfil your earthly task, you will change your nature into love.... This change is certainly difficult for some people and requires a strong will, yet you need only make an attempt, you need only once have the serious will to ensure that your earthly life is not lived in vain.... and it would become increasingly easier for you to put your 'I' aside and take care of your neighbour, for every act of love provides you with strength and strengthens your will. And soon it would no longer be a sacrifice for you but you would find your own happiness in your activity of love, because with every deed of love you come closer to God, Who is love Himself, and because you experience your approach to God as bliss. A person who is absorbed in love for his neighbour will live in quiet contentment and inner peace, he will not know any earthly desires because he will also have what he needs; the love within him will not allow any unpleasant thoughts to arise in him either, he will go through earthly life with a cheerful mind and also exude a good influence on his surroundings, for a loving person is already close to his aim because he has found unity with God through love.... Yet this is only slightly obvious to his fellow human beings, who are also supposed to carry out this change of nature without any compulsion of will. But his example, the teaching of love put into practice, will inspire far more imitation than words alone can. In earthly life it is always only about this change of nature, about shaping oneself into love, about fighting one's own love and becoming absorbed in caring for one's fellow human beings.... But works that lack love are not enough.... For it is not the 'works' that do it, but the love that must underlie the works. And a truly paradisiacal earthly life can therefore only be expected by a human race which is absorbed in love for each other. And every work of love carries its blessing within itself, it has an effect on the neighbour as well as on the person himself who gives away his love.... whereas all thinking and striving, all activity and creation is worthless if it is not based on love. And this is what people lack in the last days, what they can only ever be taught but which they must try out on themselves in order to experience the blessing of unselfish love.... Humanity is particularly addicted to selfish love, and this is synonymous with standstill or decline but can never result in ascent.... which is why love has to be preached again and again and also exemplified to fellow human beings as a good example, for without love no human being can attain perfection....

Amen

Translated by Doris Boekers